Penjajaran Ideologi ‘Feminisme dan Nasionalisme’ dalam National Council of Women’s Organisations Malaysia (NCWO) dan Kongres Wanita Indonesia (KOWANI) (The Juxtaposition of ‘Feminism and Nationalism’ Ideologies in the National Council of Women’s Organisations Malaysia (NCWO) and the Indonesian Women’s Congress (KOWANI))

Abstract

This article aims to compare the process of aligning the women’s agenda and the national agenda in the leading women’s non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Malaysia and Indonesia—namely the National Council of Women’s Organizations Malaysia (NCWO) and the Indonesian Women’s Congress (KOWANI). The juxtaposition of women’s agendas and national agendas that influence the formation and development of the history of NCWO and KOWANI is examined using the theoretical framework of feminism and nationalism. Therefore, this article outlines three objectives: (i) to explain the ideology of the women’s rights struggle of NCWO and KOWANI; (ii) to relate the ideology of NCWO and KOWANI with the nation-state building agenda; and (iii) to compare the nature of the relationship between the women’s agenda and the national agenda in NCWO and KOWANI. These objectives were answered by implementing qualitative methods and the most similar system design (MSSD) in comparative study. Primary and secondary sources were collected and analyzed using interview methods and document analysis. As a result, this study found that history of the formation, legal and leadership perspective influence the idea of NCWO and KOWANI’s struggle for women’s rights. Not only for the women’s interest per se, NCWO and KOWANI align their idea with the nation building agenda. This phenomena led to the discovery of similarities in the nature of the constructive and destructive relationship between the women’s agenda and the national agenda in NCWO and KOWANI. However, the most significant findings is that the conceptual idea in KOWANI is not identified in the case of NCWO.