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Wednesday, January 16, 2008 |
| Women and Work in Indonesia
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(BOOK REVEW)
Michele Ford and Lyn Parker, Women and Work in Indonesia, Routledge,
New York and London, 2008.
ISBN: 978-0-415-40288-0
This book examines the meaning of work for women in contemporary Indonesia. It takes a broad definition of work in order to interrogate assumptions about work and economic activity, focusing on what women themselves see as their work, which includes not only paid employment, home life and child care, but also activities surrounding ritual, healing and religious life. It analyses the key issues, including the contrasts between `new' and `old' forms of work, the relationship between experiences of migration and work, and the ways in which religion – especially Islam - shapes perceptions and practice of work. It discusses women's work in a range of different settings, both rural and urban, and in different locations, covering Sumatra, Bali, Lombok, Java, Sulawesi and Kalimantan. A wide range of types of employment are considered: agricultural labour, industrial work and new forms of work in the tertiary sector such as media and tourism, demonstrating how capitalism, globalization and local culture together produce gendered patterns of work with particular statuses and identities. It address the question of the meaning and valuing of women's `traditional' work, be it agricultural labour, domestic work or other kinds of reproductive labour, challenging assumptions of women as `only' mothers and housewives, and demonstrating how women can negotiate new definitions of `housewife' by mobilizing kinship and village relations to transcend conventional categories such as wage labour and the domestic sphere. Overall, this book is an important study of the meaning of work for women in Indonesia.
Contents:
0. Introduction: Thinking about Indonesian Women and Work Michele
Ford and Lyn Parker
1. Not your Average Housewife: Minangkabau Women Rice Farmers in West
Sumatra Evelyn Blackwood
2. Keeping Rice in the Pot: Women and Work in a Transmigration
Settlement Gaynor Dawson
3. Dukun and Bidan: The Work of Traditional and Government Midwives
in Southeast Sulawesi Simone Alesich
4. Poverty, Opportunity and Purity in Paradise: Women Working in
Lombok's Tourist Hotels Linda Rae Bennett
5. Industrial Workers in Transition: Women's Experiences of Factory
Work in Tangerang Nicholaas Warouw
6. Bodies in Contest: Gender Difference and Equity in a Coal Mine
Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt and Kathryn Robinson
7. Meanings of Work for Female Media and Communication Workers Pam
Nilan and Prahastiwi Utari
8. Makkunrai Passimokolo': Bugis Migrant Women Workers in Malaysia
Nurul Ilmi Idrus
9. Making the Best of What You've Got: Sex Work and Class Mobility in
the Riau Islands Michele Ford and Lenore Lyons
10. Straddling Worlds: Indonesian Migrant Domestic Workers in
Singapore Rosslyn von der Borch
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