From Kartini on, Indonesian women have regarded education as basic to their advancement. The first area of public policy in which Indonesian women openly engaged with governments was the education of girls. It was and continues to be a matter of mutual interest. The main areas of contention have been the kind and amount of education that the state should fund for girls and the outcomes to be expected from it. While arguing over these matters, protagonists reveal their assumptions about gender relations. This chapter examines the nature of the debate, which was at its most prominent and heartfelt early in the century. The education issue was closely related to a number of other concerns of women, which are the subject of later chapters in this book, such as marriage, motherhood and employment. Later in the century, while access to schooling remained a prominent issue in the public arena, the ways in which education might influence the construction of gender received little attention, for reasons that will be discussed.

Education is a broad term. This chapter will focus on one section of it: schooling, in which the modern state has played a prominent role as provider. Before colonial rule, Indonesian girls were of course educated informally, supervised by parents who wanted them to be properly prepared for their role in the workforce and/or married life. Girls were, after all, married early, as the next chapter will discuss.