between gender, indigenous kinship relations, state,
and religious ideologies and practices from the
colonial period onwards: the long and cosmopoli-
tan history of the region, especially the Malay
World’s position at the crossroads of East and West,
has produced enormous social diversity and com-
plexity. Moreover, the model of the autonomous
woman has given way in recent decades to more
critical versions, in which women’s previous auton-
omy is often assumed to be undermined by intensi-
fying social change.
Kinship patterns in the Malay World fall into sev-
eral categories historically: a majority bilateral
principle, which has often favored the female side,
especially in residence patterns; systems of mar-
riage exchange like those of eastern Indonesia; and
a unilineal kinship pattern, which includes the
more male emphasis of Balinese kinship practices,
and the famous matrilineal practices of the Minang-
kabau of West Sumatra in Indonesia (population of
nearly 4 million in 1990) and their small daughter
society Negeri Sembilan in Malaysia, who trace
descent through women. In rural areas the elemen-
tary or extended family has normally been the basic
unit of production and consumption, even when
several such families co-reside (Bowen 1992).
Anthropologists emphasize the ways in which
this bilateral kinship grid has underlain diverse kin-
ship beliefs and practices, supporting relatively
egalitarian ideas of gender across the region (Bowen
1992). They also underline the importance of sib-
ling relationships within these systems. Thus every-
day inheritance practices have frequently emphasized
both the male and female sides, although they have
also reworked into local patterns the formal re-
quirements of both Muslim law and local kinship
(Stivens 1996). In Minangkabau, for example,
scholars have seen a long-term accommodation
between the female-focused adat(customary law)
and Islamic rules (Blackwood 2000). Naming,
however, mostly follows the Muslim practice of
tracing descent from the father. There is disagree-
ment about the extent of male authority in house-
holds historically, although many researchers view
colonial and modern states as frequently support-
ing the rights of males in households over those of
females.
Muslim patterns of marriage and fertility in
Southeast Asia are distinctive. They share the
regional pattern of rising ages at marriage and
falling birth rates, but divorce trends have deviated
from the assumed “modern” patterns characteriz-
ing the West: the very high rates of the 1950s, espe-
cially in the first years of marriage, have declined to352 kinship and state
rates that are in some cases only a third of those in
the West (Jones 1994). The possible causes are
highly complex and variable, but include growth in
incomes, rising ages at marriage, and the decline of
arranged marriages (ibid.). Muslim populations
mostly have fertility rates above the prevailing aver-
ages, although their birth rates have also been
falling. Contemporary Muslim women clearly expe-
rience in common with other women in the region
the relentless pressures between rising demands
both at home and at work caused by modern eco-
nomic developments and globalization. Negotia-
tions within households around these demanding
domestic labor divisions, especially among “mod-
ern” middle-class dual income families, are growing.
Latterly, governments under pressure to acknowl-
edge some of the realities of modern gender divi-
sions, have incorporated more images of the working
woman into representations of women, as in Indo-
nesia (Sen and Stivens 1998). But negotiations
within households can also be forestalled, as among
the middle classes in Malaysia and Singapore,
where the employment of domestic workers has
reshaped the domestic arena. Often recruited from
neighboring countries such as Indonesia and the
Philippines, these workers have joined other waves
of transnational migration in facing sizeable risks
of abuse and exploitation.
There has been a long history of women’s organ-
izations working for women’s interests in pre-and
post-independent Indonesia and Malay(si)a. Mus-
lim women have been particularly active in past and
contemporary campaigns to reform Islamic family
law, especially divorce and polygyny provisions.
Campaigns against domestic violence have been a
feature of the last decade. In Indonesia, the govern-
ment established the National Commission on
Anti-Violence against Women in October 1998,
with a draft bill working its way toward enactment.
In Malaysia the Domestic Violence Act of 1994
came into effect in 1996. Groups engaged in cam-
paigns for sexuality rights have also arisen, includ-
ing Pink Triangle in Malaysia and Gaya Nusantara
in Indonesia. The activities of reformist groups like
the Sisters in Islam in Malaysia promoting a social
justice agenda within Islam have been especially
important in forging new public spaces for Muslim
women intellectuals and activists.Muslim minorities
Muslims form important sectors of the popula-
tion in the other countries under discussion, where
their integration has long been contentious politi-
cally: there have been active separatist movements