Conceptualizing Feminist Identity and Gender Issues among Muslim Intellectual Elites in Indonesia

Qibtiyah, Alimatul (2016) Conceptualizing Feminist Identity and Gender Issues among Muslim Intellectual Elites in Indonesia. Conceptualizing Feminist Identity and Gender Issues among Muslim Intellectual Elites in Indonesia, 3.

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Abstract

Being a selhdentified feminist activist in Southeast Asia (and indeed most of the world) is to invite controversies related to various understandings of the term 'feminist' that carry positive or negative social connotations. This is increasingly salient in the Muslim world where conceptions of feminist identity, gender issues and activism are set against different textual interpretations of Islam. For example, there are controversial differences between literal Islam and liberal Islam. Therefore this chapter examines the contestations surrounding feminist identity and the conceptualization of gender issues by Muslim intellectual elites in Indonesia. This provides a conceptual framework for an empirical investigation of feminist identities among Muslim academics, which includes lecturers and researchers in the Center for Women's Studies (Pusat Studi Wanita, hereafter PSW) and the Center for Gender Studies (Pusat Studi Gender, hereafter PSG). Both PSW and PSG are university centers of learning, and this study focuses on six such centers in Y ogyakarta. 2 The lively debate between Muslim intellectual elites and activists in Indonesia concerning feminist identities and gender issues are grounded in four key factors. First, from a broad historical perspective, the social structure in traditional Indonesian society provided women the opportunity to achieve high status and relatively elevated positions (Goody 1976; Atkinson and Errington 1990). The second (related) factor is a long history of feminist awareness in Indonesia, even if feminism as a modem discipline and movement originated from Western scholarship and literature, and has only recently been embraced by Indonesian academic departments and institutes. Third, no matter what continent or country one visits, self-identified feminists and gender activists are a source of controversy. Finally, Indonesian intellectuals are embroiled in a dynamic debate about the prospects for a legitimate form of 'Islamic feminism' to take hold in centers of higher learning. In other words, the search for compatibility between religious

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