Gender, Islam and Democracy in Indonesia

Robinson points out that violence against women was a feature that ran throughout the history of Suharto's New Order regime, from the "founding myth" that Communist women had danced over the corpses of slain generals (190) through the rape and murder of labour activist Marsinah in 1993 to the rapes of Chinese Indonesian women in 1998, at the time of the regime's downfall. [...] outstanding issues remain: polygamy, divorce, the status of religious versus secular law, crimes against women, maternal and child health, and inequalities in political representation and education.