TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search resultsWhen Idul Fitri becomes an interrogation for single women
When the "warmth" of the Idul Fitri living room becomes a cold interrogation, a woman’s Ivy League degree and global achievements are often reduced to a single, stinging metric: her marital status.
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Homebound travelers: Passengers wait for the bus at the Senayan legislative complex in Jakarta on April 4, 2024, that will transport them to West Sumatra as part of the free 2024 Idul Fitri mudik (exodus) program held by Gerindra Party lawmakers. (Antara/Galih Pradipta)
F
or many Indonesians, the living room during Idul Fitri is a sanctuary of warmth, forgiveness and family reunions. But for young, educated women, the festive mudik (exodus) atmosphere is often transformed into an interrogation room clouded by a single, relentless question: “When will you get married?”
I am not alone in this room. I know a woman who recently graduated from an Ivy League university on a prestigious scholarship and launched a promising career with an international organization. She is only 28 years old, vibrant, successful and blessed, yet society persists in asking her the same question: when will you get married?
Another friend of mine, an LPDP scholar who graduated from a top Australian university, faced an even more harrowing experience. Even at her mother’s funeral, a neighbor’s condolence was laced with a stinging remark: “What a pity she died while her daughter is still unmarried.”
It is frustrating how society remains fixated on this single metric of "success". Outside these walls, these women work tirelessly. They craft complex essays for master’s degrees, lead international fellowship projects and debate the nuances of global security. In the public sphere, they are empowered subjects.
But once they sit in the living room during Idul Fitri, those intellectual achievements seem to vanish. The family room, it turns out, is not just a place for casual chat; it is often the first arena where an Indonesian woman’s role is strictly confined.
Building a career, maintaining idealism, and pursuing higher education requires blood, sweat, and tears. When those years of effort are reduced to "single" status in a five-minute conversation, it feels like a wholesale dismissal of their hard-earned independence. These women feel that their relentless efforts to break global barriers are being systematically devalued.
Patriarchy is not solely about men oppressing women; it is a system that conditions women to police and judge one another. The living room is the precise site where older women, often unconsciously, remind the younger generation not to forget their "domestic destiny."
