Women, Islam and Modernity ― Single Women, Sexuality and Reproductive Health in Contemporary Indonesia

In popular debates about reproductive and sexual rights, formal religions, especially Islam, are seen as barriers providing institutional and ideological resistance to women's realization of reproductive and social autonomy. This book challenges such simplified views of Islam. Based on original fieldwork in Eastern Indonesia, the book explores the complex factors that affect how young Indonesian women form their sexual subjectivities. It discusses the cultural and historical conditions under which single Muslim women repress or express their sexuality, and examines how other factors besides Islam simultaneously influence the ways in which young women approach courtship, sexuality and reproductive health in an era of dynamic social change. It demonstrates that Islam is neither alone in trying to control female sexuality, nor entirely successful in doing so.

Linda Rae Bennett is a VicHealth Public Health Fellow at the Australian Research Centre in Sex Health and Society of La Trobe University.