Here is an interesting excerpt about gender in Balinese society taken from an article written by Ana Dragojlovic entitled Performing Balinese Femininity in Migration. Without further ado here is the excerpt

The scholarship on gender in Bali is one which presents Bali not only as a gender-segregated society but as largely patriarchal. The extreme gender differentiation is obvious in rituals and symbolic activities. While men and women work together and women participate in many forms of economic production with men, that cannot be translated as gender equality as the tasks in their work are often hierarchically ordered, such that women’s work is often valued lower. Nakatani asserts that the Indonesian government characterises the woman’s role as both productive and reproductive but emphasises that motherhood and wifehood should come first. Strong gender segregation is obvious in the ritual sphere in which most of the offering preparation is done at home by women. Women also have a key role in making offerings for public activities such as Nyepi (Balinese New Year), Galungan and Hari Kuningan and the odalan (anniversary) in each of the desa adat temples in the course of the Balinese 210-day year. However, while women’s contribution to the ceremonies is quite substantial, Balinese Hinduism associates female fertility with pollution, and menstruating women are not permitted to enter the temple or participate in the rituals.

This gender inequality is based on several facts: a patrilineal kinship system and belief in reincarnation within patrilines; virilocal residence after marriage; the practice of polygyny; a husband’s custody of children after divorce; inheritance wherein a woman inherits only her personal possessions; the control of women’s physical mobility; and a caste system based on an ideology of subordinates’ impurity, which reinforces the superior position of men. Divorce in Bali is especially difficult for women since children are considered to belong to the husband’s patrilineage, and women have no right to family property and wealth. For the discussion in this paper it is important to emphasize gender segregation in public life where even husbands and wives rarely go anywhere together or converse with each other in public.

The practice of polygyny is an example of the double standards that exist for men and women. Polygyny is usually ascribed to the lack of children or particularly the lack of sons. However, Jennaway in her book “Sisters and Lovers: Women and Desire in Bali”notes that men’s motives for polygyny are various. Such marriages give a man a position of power and ways of exercising his sexual prowess, but at the same time such marriages might prove to be an economic burden for a man. Jennaway also points to women’s agency in effecting polygynous marriages.

Popularity: 3% [?]