Through the Eyes of Researcher: Gender in Bali

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.

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