Cut from a Different Cloth

Posted by Danielle and John

Our walk to Indonesian language class took longer the other day when a traffic jam developed in front of St. Canisius Catholic Elementary School next to our usually tranquil Yogyakarta street.

Weaving our way through cars and motorcycles, we quickly realized the source of the roadblock. Rather than the standard 7:30 a.m. drop-off, parents were taking pictures of their children wearing traditional Javanese costumes. Girls were dressed in kabaya kain (check out the sample on the left: cloth wrapped tightly like a skirt and a fitted tunic), with traditional hairstyles and lots of make-up. Boys were wearing Javanese hats and jackets, with toy daggers tucked in their waistcoats.

We were unaware of any national holidays, but then again Indonesia has so many holidays honoring its religious traditions, including days off for Buddha’s birthday and Chinese New Year. So we figured it was entirely possible that April 27 was some sort of important occasion.

When we asked our host family about the Javanese costumes, they explained that the students were honoring Kartini, an early 20^th-century Indonesian women’s rights advocate who promoted the girls’ and women’s education and professional opportunities. We had read about “Kartini Day” (April 21) in the Jakarta Post last week, but our neighborhood’s school was late in its celebration because of exams last week.

The Kartini Day custom is for women to dress in traditional costume—a picture in last week’s paper showed a woman pumping gas in a movement-constraining kain — not what you see at your local Shell station. But as one Jakarta Post editorialist pointed out, dressing in traditional costume to honor a women’s rights activist seems somewhat incongruous. In order to celebrate how far women in Indonesia have come, females get all dolled up. It’s not clear how that honors Kartini, and we never did quite understand why the boys at the school were also wearing traditional attire.

People in the United States often ask Danielle about the condition of women and gender relations in Indonesia. In many respects, the Kartini Day celebration is a useful illustration of this complicated set of issues. On the one hand, Indonesian women (thanks to pioneers like Kartini) are fully integrated into the public sphere today. They obtain education at the same rate as men and are employed in all sectors of the economy. Indonesia’s previous president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, is a woman and is still the reigning opposition figure in Indonesian politics. (Our resident political scientist notes, however, that “Mega” is the daughter of Indonesia’s first president and deeply revered national hero, Sukarno, and thus her popularity and success is attributable to a “successor” effect.)

On the other hand, Indonesia adheres to tradition and social change happens at a slow pace. For example, we also read in the newspaper last week that five high-school girls were prevented from sitting for their national exams because they are pregnant and unmarried. What would Kartini have to say about that?

Clothes reveal something about cultural values in all societies, and here they often speak to Indonesian attitudes regarding modesty. Today, we saw a throng of Indonesian high school boys and girls running for their PE class. They wore standard-issue gym uniforms like in the U.S., but with three-quarter-length shirt sleeves and long pants. Some of the girls wore headscarves, color coordinated with the uniforms. With the prevailing emphasis on standards of respectful physical appearance, students endure gym class in 90+ degree heat in clothes seemingly designed for much cooler temperatures. No one seems to think much of it. Presumably, if you never wear shorts or a tank top, you have no idea how much more comfortable it can be.

Indonesians’ propensity for uniforms also stands out. They are standard issue not only in many restaurants and hotels, but also in shops, banks, and all government agencies. The subtleties inherent in how the uniforms are worn, however, do seem to tell us something about the diverse spectrum of people wearing them. Prefer the long-sleeve option even though it is hotter than Hades in the cramped office? You’ll find a clothing store happy to oblige. Would you like a headscarf to match your outfit? No problem!

It should be said that the “Muslim Wear” shops in Yogyakarta, where mannequins sport brightly-colored jilbabs to match any outfit, are probably not what most Americans envision when they think of an Islamic woman’s wardrobe. It’s a far cry from the burqas of Afghanistan. And while discussions about Muslim religiosity often put a spotlight on the headscarf, we often overlook similarities in other religions--Russian Orthodox women cover their heads before entering a church and Orthodox Jews cover their heads in public.

More this weekend, after we make our pilgrimages to the Buddhist temples at Borobodur and Hindu temples at Prambanan.