sharia-based laws 139
understand the legal knowledge and awareness of women in general,
I interviewed 12 women and distributed questionnaires to 100 women
in three different areas in Tangerang. With regard to women’s issues
in the public sphere, one regulation was studied in closer detail: the
Cianjur Sharia-based local regulation on the requirement for female
Muslim civil servants to wear a jilbab. To gain a picture of the response
to it I interviewed women, distributed questionnaires and visited the
offices of the regional administration, the local police and the local public
hospital.
Presenting a number of court cases, this contribution argues that the
legal position of women has strengthened in cases only where technical
judicial reforms have been introduced. It also suggests that women still
face inequalities in court decisions on familial cases and that a number
of local regulations have restricted women’s freedom of choice in the
public sphere.
2 Women in Indonesia’s National Statutory and Local
Regulations
Women have long been an important topic in legal discourse in Muslim
countries. Under Sharia, women are treated differently from men. In
light of the fact that many classical Islamic family laws placed women
in a subordinate position, the Indonesian government initiated legal
reforms and introduced new rules at the national level, included in the
1974 Law of Marriage and the Kompilasi, to improve women’s standing in
family law. This section discusses women and the legal rules that apply
to them under Islamic family law and local Sharia regulations.
2.1 Personal or Family Laws
Following the trend to codify Islamic family law in a number of Muslim
countries, Indonesia issued the so-called Kompilasi Hukum Islam in 1991.
Keeping pace with the growing demand by society for gender equality,
Indonesia has used the Kompilasi to take notice of women’s interests,
paying special attention to polygamy, divorce, marital property and
post-divorce rights for women. Here, I will discuss briefly the rules on
these issues laid down in the Kompilasi. I refer to the Kompilasi, but
am aware of its low legal standing as it was issued only as a presidential
instruction. The Kompilasi is a regulation that applies specifically to