Gerwani: Towards the Vanguard of the Women’s Movement

Abstract

Gerwani, like the non-Islamic and non-communist women’s organizations in Indonesia, wished to achieve equality with men. Unlike these organizations, they did not centre their struggle for equality with men on marriage reform, and so the disappointing outcome of the parliamentary debates on the issue was less debilitating for them. Gerwani shifted its focus from marriage to a struggle for equal labour rights for women and or equal responsibilities in the struggle for ‘full national independence’ and ocialism. In the process, it came to regard itself as possessing a superior analysis and strategy, and thus as the vanguard of the women’s movement.

no longer

are we gilded posies

engaging when compliant

exquisite when yielding

enchanting when submissive

to hell ’tis our duty to go

to heaven permitted to follow

and no longer

are we blossoms cast aside

downtrodden

selling our sweat for next to nothing

workers at half the price

no security

no equality

only duty

we have cried out

from behind the walls of segregation

from the clutches of the spiteful bed

from the nightly business in the gutters

from the revenge of unwilling wedlock

“we are human beings!”

Sugiarti (Lekra 1962: 65)¹