April/May, 1998
No. 034/VI/98
cover story
Ground Breakers
Bali's top corporate
women
Out of the Frying
Pan
The legacy of widow
burning in modern Bali
beyond
bali
Pedal Power
Cycling around Lombok
regular
features
Sidelines
The cultural
value of
Indonesia textiles
Adventure
Off-road trips by Land
Cruiser
Home Grown
Bali's surf hero of
nineties, Rizal Tanjung
Health and Beauty
Mandara's many
Bali
spas
Books
The Butterflies of Bali
Food
Four delis that have
survived the crisis
Photo Gallery
F.X. Marit captures nyepi
on film
Jungle
Drums
 |
Dear Readers,
On 21 April, Kartini Day, Indonesia celebrates on of its official national heroes. Raden Ajeng Kartini was born on that date in 1879 to a Javanese noble family. Despite the fact that she was clearly intellectually gifted, as a woman she was denied the colonial education that was made available to her aristocrat brothers. Kartini protested this injustice by opening the first primary school providing education especially for indigenous girls in 1908, which led to the the establishment of a series of ‘Kartini Schools’ by her admirers after her death. At the time the first Kartini School was opened, Balinese queens and concubines were still being sacrificed on their kings’ funeral pyres. This need not be surprising - it is often the case that those who herald emancipation, as did Kartini, are surrounded by conditions of subjugation. In Bali Echo’s 34th edition, Jaye Wood shows that these contrasting realities are as much a part of the lives of women in modern Bali as they were for a noble Javanese woman at the turn of the century. Her piece raises the question of whether perhaps the most difficult challenge facing these women is not in straddling ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’, but in meeting the societal demand that they make a clear distinction between the two. Read on! |
[main page]
Copyright © 1998 Bali Echo. All Rights Reserved
site design by Access Bali Online