Eka Srimulyani: Women from Traditional Islamic Educational Institutions in Indonesia: Negotiating Public Spaces, 2012
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eka SrIMUlyaNI, Women from Traditional Islamic Educational Institutions in Indonesia: negotiating Public Spaces, amsterdam University Press, IIaS Publications Series, Monographs 8, 2012, 184 p., ill.; ISBN: 978-90-8964-421-3, 978-90-485-1621-6 (pdf), 978-90-485-1622-3 (e-book) This book is a significant work as it opens new perspectives on gender and Islamic institutions. 1 The 20th century altered gender perspectives in general but it apparently did so also in a milieu that many thought was the least permeable to such changes, the pesantren, Islamic boarding schools of Indonesia. eka Srimulyani’s meticulous work exposes the increase in pious Muslim (santri) female agency, especially the nyiais, the wifes of kiais, i. e. ulama leading the pesantren, and the mechanisms that made the nyais’ agency possible. It goes against the assumption of

pesantren women being confined to the private domain and thus without agency. as the author underlines, these women’s agency may be weaker than that of the kiais or other women, but it does exist: “ it is different but significant”. eka pointedly asks: “ If the kiai is the symbolic father, who is the mother? Why is this not obvious in many works on pesantren?”.

eka Srimulyani has chosen as her main field work a pesantren that was a pioneer in female religious education, the Pesantren Seblak (1921-1988), situated in Jombang district, the birthplace of Indonesia’s largest Islamic organization, the Nahdlatul Ulama. Her work is based on many in-depth interviews with actors bearing testimony to the reform of female education in the 1930s. The five chapters are: 1. Why Study Women and Pesantren?; 2. Women and Pesantren education: History, Kinship, and Contents; 3. Women and Pesantrens in Jombang: a Portrait from the Fieldwork; 4. Nyais of Jombang Pesantrens: roles and agency; and 5. Santriwati’s life: religious Feminity in Pesantren education. Many factors have contributed to the new agency of santri women, but – and this is a key finding of this research – the increase of their agency has depended mainly on kinship relationships within this milieu that is otherwise bound to reproduce old patriarchal models. Of course, all this occurs in a new context, the general awareness of the significance of education at the beginning of the 20th century. The dutch ethical policy produced a first generation of Indonesians with general education who founded new schools for natives in different places in Indonesia. In 1904, dewi Sartika was the first to do so in Bandung. Other places followed. In 1922 Taman Siswa was the first important educational institution run by Indonesia’s nationalists, which admitted female pupils. The Muhammadiyah followed suit, with ahmad dahlan himself teaching a few female pupils. Traditionalist Islam did not shy away from following these reforms. In 1919, in Jombang, Kiai Bisry Syansury and his wife Nurkhadijah began to organize a small informal learning group for girls in the compound of the pesantren.

The author relates how these educational reforms taking place in Jombang came about. Hasyim asyari, Nahdlatul Ulama’s charismatic kiai and founder, taught Islamic Comptes rendus 255

Archipel 85, Paris, 2013