3 - The Indonesian Women's Engagements in the (Transnational) Decolonial Movement, 1945-1960s

A reading of Indonesian women’s history suggests that transnational activities were not the priority of the Indonesian women’s movement in the early years of Indonesia’s independence. However, the Indonesian women’s periodicals from the late 1940s until the early 1960s and the transnational women’s organizational records, such as WIDF Collection and Archief Nederlandse Vrouwenbeweging show an explosion of articles and accounts addressing transnational activities and exchanges between Indonesian women and other women from overseas, mainly the Netherlands. By focusing on the transnational activities of Indonesian women in the post-1945 transitional decades, this presentation analyzes how women engaged in the decolonial movement, which intertwined with the Cold War contestation and the Third World formation. It shows that the decolonial movement during that period was emancipatory in various ways. It also reveals that Indonesian women succeeded in exercising their citizenship rights, regaining some of the protagonist roles they had not enjoyed in the earlier decade, and reshaping linkages among women’s movement organizations and other political currents and movements. Subsequently, it challenges the hegemonic narrative of feminism and transnational women’s history, which have been perceived as quintessentially Western.