Hearing Women's Voices, Contesting Women's Bodies in Post New Order Indonesia

Abstract

Over the last decade in Indonesia there has been a striking increase in the public presence of women. Sexualised display of women's bodies, already flourishing in the mass media boom of the 1990s, has expanded further with the relaxation of the ideological restrictions and media controls of the Suharto era. Women authors, once a rarity in literary circles, now publish prolifically, producing works marked by frank depictions of sexual issues and encounters which have been assigned the collective label of sastra wangi, 'perfumed literature.