The intent for a girl to learn these skills was to
refine her female deportment (Omar 1994, 28–9)
and create feminine qualities that would enable her
to secure a spouse and maintain a household later
on in life. That traditional gender role patterns are
demanded by the older women of younger girls in
Kelantan has been argued to “have an almost all-
embracing grip on role formation” (Rudie 1983,
137–8). Yet this “grip” has been seen to be positive
in that it creates a cooperative network among
women who even help each other by selling pro-
duce in the marketplace for those who cannot make
the trip themselves.State constructions of gender
roles
State discourses have also reinforced women’s
caretaker role in the family. Malaysia’s modernity
project as captured in Vision 2020 calls for the
active contribution of women from the middle and
upper income echelons to wage employment, while
stressing that they continue to retain their role of
mother in the family. The dichotomy of gender
roles was echoed in earlier policies such as the 70
million target National Population Policy and the
National Policy on Women or Dasar Wanita Negara.
In the Family Development section of the Sixth
Malaysia Plan (1991, 424, as cited in Puthu-
cheary 1991, 11–12), which principally empha-
sized women’s role in providing a “conducive and
harmonious family environment,” while being
simultaneously actively engaged in the country’s
wage economy, work was defined as an added
dimension to a woman’s familial responsibilities,
thus reinforcing the rhetoric of the “ideal” woman
as one who is able to successfully balance the roles
of worker and mother/wife (Puthucheary 1991,
12). For many urban women who want a career
and family, the employment of a foreign domestic
worker has been the solution (Chin 1998).
In Indonesia, official discourses assign women to
take the lead role in the performance of reproduc-
tive duties. In contrast, the husband is recognized
as the head of the household whose primary role is
that of breadwinner. Although colonial and post-
independence regimes subscribed to this dominant
discourse, it only became vigorously institutional-
ized during Suharto’s reign through two key state
institutions – the Family Welfare Movement (PKK)
and Dharma Wanita (Parawansa 2002, Brenner 1995,
Wolf 1992). Through these institutions, the ideals
of state “Ibuism” (maternalism) were propagated,
emphasizing the primary functions of women as
producers of the nation’s future generations, loyal
companions to their husbands, mothers and educa-244 household division of labor
tors of children, managers of households, and use-
ful members of society (Sen 1998, Wolf 1992).
However, PKK and Dharma Wanita failed to recog-
nize women’s worker identity – whether as paid
employees or executors of unpaid family labor. A
shift occurred when the Ministry for the Role of
Women began to portray women in their dual roles
in both the domestic and public spheres (Parawansa
2002, Sen 1998, 43). From then onwards, the term
peran ganda(dual role) was frequently echoed in
the official discourses of the New Order regime.
However, Indonesian feminists picked up on the
implications of peran ganda, highlighting the actual
workload of women in raising a family. This led to
the formulation of the Broad Outlines of State
Policy (GBHN) (1993–8), emphasizing shared re-
sponsibility of men and women in the domestic
sphere, especially in the education of children and
the “cultural and philosophical guidance of chil-
dren” (Sen 1998, 45). In redefining gender equity,
however, the economic well-being of a household
was left out of the equation, thereby disregarding
the experiences of working-class urban and rural
women who were unable to afford hired help. Since
the Suharto era, efforts at promoting gender equity
in the family, society, and nation continue; yet offi-
cial discourses of gender roles and identities have
remained unchanged (Parawansa 2002).Bibliography
H. ≠Abd al-≠â†ì, The family structure in Islam, Indiana-
polis 1982.
S. Brenner, Why women rule the roost. Rethinking
Javanese ideologies of gender and self-control, in
A. Ong and M. Peletz (eds.), Bewitching women, pious
men. Gender and body politics in Southeast Asia,
Berkeley 1995, 19–50.
J. Carsten, Analogues or opposites. Household and com-
munity in Pulau Langkawi, Malaysia, in C. MacDonald
(ed.), De la hutte au palais. Sociétés “à maison” en Asie
du Sud-Est insulaire, Paris 1987, 153–68.
——, Cooking money. Gender and the symbolic trans-
formation of means of exchange in a Malay fishing
community, in J. Parry and M. Bloch (eds.), Money and
the morality of exchange, Cambridge 1989, 117–41.
——, Houses in Langkawi. Stable structures or mobile
homes?, in J. Carsten and S. Hugh-Jones (eds.), About
the house. Levi-Strauss and beyond, Cambridge 1995,
105–28.
C. B. N. Chin, In service and servitude. Foreign female
domestic workers and the Malaysian “modernity”
project, New York 1998.
T. W. Devasahayam, Consumed with modernity and “tra-
dition.” Food, women, and ethnicity in changing urban
Malaysia, Ph.D. diss., Department of Anthropology,
Syracuse University 2001.
——, Empowering or enslaving? What adat and agama
mean for gender relations and domestic food produc-
tion in Malay households, paper presented at Urban
Malaysia. Eat Drink, Halal Haram: Food, Islam and
Society in Asia Workshop, 3–5 December 2003, Asia
Research Institute, National University of Singapore.