* Corresponding Author
Are Indonesian Girls Okay? An Examination of The Discourse of Child Marriage, Victimization, and Humanitarian Visuality of Global South Girls
https://doi.org/10.22146/studipemudaugm.57432 Annisa R Beta(1*), Ryan Febrianto(2)
(1) University of Melbourne
(2) Center on Child Protection and Wellbeing at Universitas Indonesia/PUSKAPA
(*) Corresponding Author
Abstract
The discourse of child marriage in relation to the lives of the girls in Indonesia specifically and the Global South generally is often limited to describing their vulnerability and position as victims. Practices of child marriage are inseparable from its exploitative and harmful nature. This paper, however, shows that the discourse of child marriage produced in humanitarian projects and interventions often avoids the complexity and diversity of the practices and the lives of the girls and reduces the problem into monolithic narrative of their communities’ traditions, backwardness, and inherent gender inequality. This paper asks: How has the discourse of child marriage in relation to Indonesian girls developed historically? How have international NGOs depicted the issue of child marriage? We show that child marriage discourse is historically rooted in colonial ideas surrounding modernity, childhood, and marriage, and that documents published by international NGOs tend to flatten the complex experiences and lives of Indonesian girls.
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Ansell, Nicola. 2005. Children, Youth, and Development. Oxon: Routledge.
Archambault, Caroline S. 2011 "Ethnographic Empathy and the Social Context of Rights: “Rescuing” Maasai Girls from Early Marriage", American Anthropologist, Vol. 113, No. 4 pp. 632-643
Banet-Weiser, Sarah. 2015. “‘Confidence You Can Carry!’: Girls in Crisis and the Market for Girls’ Empowerment Organizations.” Continuum 29(2):182–93.
Bappenas & KPPPA. 2020. "Strategi Nasional Pencegahan Perkawinan Anak" (National Strategy for the Prevention of Child Marriage). Jakarta: Ministry of Planning and Ministry of Women Empowerment and Child Protection.
Bhana, Deevia. 2008. “Children’s Sexual Rights in an Era of HIV/AIDS.” Pp. 77–85 in Development with a Body: Sexuality, human rights and development, edited by A. Cornwall, S. Corrêa, and S. Jolly. London & New York: Zed Books.
Blackburn, S. & Bessel, S. 1997. “Marriageable age: Political debate on early marriage in twentieth-century Indonesia". Indonesia, 107-141
BPS, Bappenas, UNICEF Indonesia, & PUSKAPA. 2020. "Pencegahan Perkawinan Anak: Percepatan yang Tidak Bisa Ditunda" Jakarta: National Statistics Bureau and Ministry of Planning.
Bunting, Annie. 2005. “Stages of Development: Marriage of Girls and Teens as an International Human Rights Issue.” Social & Legal Studies 14(1):17–38.
Calkin, Sydney. 2015a. “Feminism, Interrupted? Gender and Development in the Era of ‘Smart Economics.’” Progress in Development Studies 15(4):295–307.
Calkin, Sydney. 2015b. “Post-Feminist Spectatorship and the Girl Effect:‘Go Ahead, Really Imagine Her.’” Third World Quarterly 36(4):654–669.
Cobbett, Mary. 2014. “Beyond ‘Victims’ and ‘Heroines’: Constructing ‘Girlhood’ in International Development.” Progress in Development Studies 14(4):309–20.
Duncan, Simon. 2007. “What’s the Problem with Teenage Parents? And What’s the Problem with Policy?” Critical Social Policy 27(3):307–334.
Driscoll, Catherine. 2008. “Girls today-Girls, Girl Culture and Girl Studies.” Girlhood Studies 1(1):13-32.
Escobar, Arturo. 1995. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Gangoli, Geetanjali, Melanie McCarry, and Amina Razak. 2009. “Child Marriage or Forced Marriage? South Asian Communities in North East England.” Children & Society 23(6):418–429.
Giaquinta, Belèn. 2016. “Silenced Subjectivities & Missed Representations: Unpacking The Gaps Of The International Child Marriage Discourse.” (MA Thesis) International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague.
Global Early Adolescent Study & Rutgers WPF. 2019. Lembar Fakta Kesetaraan Gender Remaja Di Indonesia.
Global Early Adolescent Study, Youth Voices Research, & Rutgers WPF. 2019. Gender Norms and Adolescent Development, Health and Wellbeing in Indonesia.
Grijns, M., Limijaya, S., Agustinah, A., Restuningrum, N., Fathurrohman, I., Damayanti, V. & Harahap, R. 2016. “Pernikahan Anak di Sukabumi Jawa Barat: Diri dan Agensi Anak Perempuan” Jurnal Perempuan 88, 21 (1), 9-33
Grijns, Mies., and Hoko Horii. 2018. “Child Marriage in a Village in West Java (Indonesia): Compromises between Legal Obligations and Religious Concerns”. Asian Journal of Law and Society, 5(2), 453-466
Harris, Anita. 2004. Future Girl: Young Women in the Twenty-First Century. Routledge.
Hickel, Jason. 2014. “The ‘Girl Effect’: Liberalism, Empowerment and the Contradictions of Development.” Third World Quarterly 35(8):1355–73.
Horii, Hoko. 2019. “A blind spot in international human rights framework: a space between tradition and modernity within the child marriage discourse?”, The International Journal of Human Rights
Horii, Hoko. 2020. “Walking a thin line: Taking children’s decision to marry seriously?”, Childhood: a global journal of child research 27(2): 254-270.
Huis, S.C. van. 2015. “Islamic courts and women's divorce in Indonesia: The cases of Cianjur and Bulukumba” (Ph.D. thesis). Leiden: Leiden University.
Khoja-Moolji, Shenila. 2016. “Representations Matter: It Is Critical to Deconstruct the Narratives and Visuals of Development Campaigns.” South Asia @ LSE.
Koffman, Ofra, and Rosalind Gill. 2013. “‘The Revolution Will Be Led by a 12-Year-Old Girl’: Girl Power and Global Biopolitics.” Feminist Review 105(1):83–102.
Kurasawa, Fuyuki. 2015. “How Does Humanitarian Visuality Work? A Conceptual Toolkit for a Sociology of Iconic Suffering.” Sociologica 9(1):1–59.
LeGreco, Marianne, and Sarah J. Tracy. 2009. “Discourse Tracing as Qualitative Practice.” Qualitative Inquiry, 15(9): 1516-1543.
MacDonald, Katie. 2016. “Calls for Educating Girls in the Third World: Futurity, Girls and the ‘Third World Woman.’” Gender, Place & Culture 23(1):1–17.
MacKinnon, K. 2011. “Development Professionals in Northern Thailand”. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press (1-21).
Mohanty, Chandra. 1988. “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses.” Feminist Review, 30(1):61–88.
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 2003. Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Durham: Duke University Press.
Plan International. 2018. Time to Act! Accelerating Efforts to End Child, Early and Forced Marriage in Asia. Bangkok.
Plan International. 2020. The 2020 Asia Girls Report: Introducing The Asia Girls’ Leadership Index. Bangkok.
Saraswati, Marissa, and Annisa R. Beta. 2020. “Knowing Responsibly: Decolonizing Knowledge Production of Indonesian Girlhood.” Feminist Media Studies 0(0):1–17.
Save The Children International. 2016. Every Last Girl: Free to Live, Free to Learn, Free from Harm. London.
Save The Children International & The Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. 2018. Toward an End to Child Marriage: Lessons from Research and Practice in Development and Humanitarian Sectors.
Termeulen, Renske R. 2019. “Love, sex, and marrying early in Lombok, Indonesia: Researching young people's agency and the influence of social media” (MSc. Thesis) Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam.
UNICEF & Bappenas. 2019. "Achieving the SDGs for Children in Indonesia: Emerging Findings for Reaching the Targets". Jakarta: Ministry of Planning and UNICEF
Van Bemmelen, S. T. & Grijns, M. 2018. “Perdebatan tentang Perkawinan Anak, Mulai dari Zaman Kolonial Hingga ke Kurun Jawa Masa Kini: Adat, Agama, dan Negara” in Menikah Muda di Indonesia: Suara, Hukum, Praktik, p. 321-372. Jakarta: Yayasan Pustaka Obor Indonesia.
Waites, Matthew. 2005. The Age of Consent: Young People, Sexuality, and Citizenship. Springer.
Warner, Elizabeth. 2004. “Behind the Wedding Veil: Child Marriage as a Form of Trafficking in Girls.” American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law 12(2):233–72.
Wilson, Kalpana. 2015. “Towards a Radical Re-Appropriation: Gender, Development and Neoliberal Feminism.” Development and Change 46(4):803–32.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22146/studipemudaugm.57432
Article Metrics
Abstract views : 15148
| 
views : 4558
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
Copyright (c) 2020 Jurnal Studi Pemuda
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
| Jurnal Studi Pemuda (Online ISSN 2527-3639; Print ISSN 2252-9020) is published by the Youth Studies Centre in collaboration with Faculty of Social and Political Science, Universitas Gadjah Mada. |