Response to Smith-Hefner’s “Javanese Women and the Veil in Post-Soeharto Indonesia”

Nancy Smith-Hefner, in her article “Javanese Women and the Veil in Post-Soeharto Indonesia,” claims that the resurgence of Islam in Java, Indonesia and consequently the wearing of the veil or the jilbab is not necessarily tied to traditional values of Islam, embraced as a uniform practice religiously or politically, or by any means fixed as a statement and practice assumed by Javanese women. In this piece, Smith-Hefner examines several different case studies of Javanese women in which they have donned, or chosen not to don, the jilbab. She opens with a discussion of the wearing of the jilbab within a historical framework, also discussing other veils worn by Muslim women including the chador and kerudung and by including the important context of the desire to display modesty as is indicated by the Qur’an. She goes on to indicate that the new veiling is also now used to indicate the increased autonomy and education – in addition to an expanded commitment to Islam – in the Indonesian state. Smith-Hefner makes several distinctions among Javanese women by discussing the prevalence of the priyayi and by indicating the two modes of education – in which one mode is secular and the other is founded in the Islamic tradition (including education before university). The individual women to which Smith-Hefner draws attention highlight the diverse reasons and commitments to the jilbab and the veiling of Javanese women in general – critically focusing on the lack of unity and the multitude of influences one woman and an entire community of women may feel in their desires to wear or not wear a jilbab. Smith-Hefner conducts this work through ethnographic study in Yogyakarta, Java, over the course of eleven months.

Perhaps a most key point to this analysis and critique is to draw attention to Smith-Hefner’s considerable discussion of “western” influences on this new veiling so as to reveal that while for some women, veiling is a deep profession of faith and modesty, for others it is purely a response to mandated garment requirements at university. Because she provides this discussion framework, she reminds the reader that a heightened sense of morality due to Islamic practices may not be the only reason that a woman would want to veil herself in Indonesia and elsewhere. This additionally helps highlight the lack of stagnancy in many cultural practices that “westerners” may view as such. By writing such a widely-scoped piece about veiling, Smith-Hefner helps to bring a likely misunderstood practice to a larger audience and light so that it may not be viewed through quite a myopic lens. However, more examples of lived-experiences of the different subsets of women in Javanese society may have proven beneficial to provide Smith-Hefner a greater ground to stand upon as she worked to cultivate a cultural understanding of veiling Indonesians. That is to say, the few women interviewed, although broader statistical data is included in the article, may not provide enough of a complete picture to create such far-reaching conclusions. An interesting connection to be drawn, however, is to Zeamer’s “The Single Woman” in which the author highlights the rising narrative of a female life not solely devoted to the raising of children (“traditional standards of feminine success” [3]) while also noting the emphasis the modern Thai woman may still place on fulfilling familial duty. This sentiment is echoed in Smith-Hefner’s discussion in many of the women she interviewed. They too feel the desire to marry and raise children but yet also choose to attend school, obtain and keep jobs (even after marriage), repay monetary debts to their families, etc. Both instances seem to recognize a collision of cultural and familial tradition with the typical notions of modernity (for good and bad), regardless of but also in response to gender dynamics. 

Questions:

1. Can the lived-experiences of only a few Javanese women adequately express the changing cultural conditions in Post-Soeharto Indonesia? Additionally, can the experiences of Javanese women particularly be extrapolated to women in other parts of Indonesia in which half of the nation’s Muslim population resides?

2. What are the connections between veiling and the changing and diverse roles of the Javanese woman in society? Further, how might the narratives of veiled or non-veiled women and family be altered in response to changing cultural and societal conditions?

3. What can be made of the western version of “modernity” and Islamic veiling now in light of this reading? What responses ought to be drawn to some Javanese women rejecting the veil due to their beliefs that it is a constriction of gender roles and reinforces patriarchal ideals, sexism, and like-minded ideologies?

4. Does the use of photographs in the article add to the discussion material in any way, and if so, how?

Quotes:

1. “In contrast to their veiled counterparts from secular school backgrounds, most of these women report that they never had to make an anxiously self-aware decision to veil. Equally important, their commitment to veiling is colored by fewer political overtones than is the case for, so-called born-again women raised in nominally Islamic (abangan) families. The latter tend to see veiling as part of a religious transformation, the result of a lengthy process of deliberation and turmoil, sometimes political, sometimes pietistic, often both. In contrast, for Muslim women from traditionalist backgrounds, veiling is an important but largely taken-for-granted element of their religious upbringing and community.” (403)

2. “To put the matter in cultural terms, many middle-class women have clearly caught wind of a new narrative of personal and self-development. They cite what they describe as the solitude and boredom of staying at home all day (like their mothers) and talk about their desires for “self-actualization” and “realizing their potential.” This complex mix of motives – monetary, religious, individualistic, and self-actualization – reminds us that, like the Islamic resurgence as a whole, veiling has heterogeneous influences that are responsive to both the desire for greater religious piety and the mobility and prosperity of the new middle class.” (412)

3. “Equally important- - and long overlooked by many Western researchers – religious and professional education have combined to bring about widespread rejection of many of the sexual and social customs once associated with the elite culture of the Javanese priyayi: mystical practices, the cloistering of young women, early arranged marriages, and hierarchical relations in the family. At the same time, however, the proliferation of religious organizations, Islamic programs in the media, and study groups devoted to the question of women in Islam indicates that the gender terms of Indonesia’s Islamic resurgence are anything but settled. Veiling provides a particularly striking example of this unfinished transformation. The practice also serves as a reminder to Western observers that however uniform it may appear from a distance, the veil is, and will likely remain, anything but uniform in its politics and sexual meanings.” (416)