Women and the State in Modern Indonesia

As the previous chapter on education showed, a prime concern of Indonesian women in pressing for schooling for girls was to prevent them from being forced into early marriage. Concentrating more directly on how the age of marriage became a political issue in twentieth-century Indonesia, this chapter investigates the changing intensity, focus and participation in debate over the issue. Compared with India, the incidence of very early marriage among Indonesian girls appears never to have been very high, yet among those trying to ‘modernise’ Indonesia it was considered to be a ‘social evil’ that parents married off their daughters at or before the onset of puberty. Social reformers differed as to the reasons for their concern and as to what action should be taken and by whom. In particular there were strong disagreements about whether government intervention was either desirable or effective in raising the age of marriage.

The age at which it is appropriate for girls to marry has been a contentious matter in many countries. In societies where marriage was considered to be the prerogative of families, the children themselves were rarely consulted and the age of marriage, or at least of betrothal, was likely to be quite young, before children could exert their own will. Although physical readiness for sexual intercourse and child-bearing was a consideration, this was a matter for the supervision of adult kin, and the timing of the wedding could if necessary be separated from the consummation of marriage.