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FLUX AND FLOWS OF PEOPLE, POWER AND PRACTICES: ISSUES RELATING TO SOCIAL JUSTICE219Febriany has been working for Makassar TV for threeyears. She said she had never experienced genderdiscrimination working in the public sphere. In herfamily as well, her parents have encouraged her andsupported her to go to university.“If you talk about gender, women and men are equalhere,” she said firmly.Fabriany added that her editor, also the mother of twochildren, performed well in leading the editorial team.Meanwhile Sri Wahyuni of The Jakarta Post has nodoubt that women enjoy rights to freedom in the arenain which she lives and works. Wahyuni said that sheoften visited rural villages in Yogyakarta, and hadinterviewed and written many stories about womenwho are active in their communities. She hadwitnessed no discrimination against Muslim women inpublic spheres, including in rural villages.“Many Muslim women work as journalists here. Theywear a scarf and they can get along with their malecolleagues, there is no discrimination,” she insisted.Muslim women as Portrayed in Mass Media: A storyof Anissa: Fact or fiction?Perempuan Berkalung Sorban (Woman with Turban)is a controversial film based on the novel of the sametitle by the woman writer Abidah el Khalieqy. Thenovel was first published in Yogyakarta in 2001. Thestory features the life of Anissa, the daughter of areligious leader who owned a conservative pesantren(Islamic boarding school) in East Java in 1985.Anissa was a rebel since she was a young girl. Shewondered why she was treated unfairly compared toher two elder brothers. She wanted to go to universityin a big city or even to Cairo like her male relatives.Anissa tried to go her own way by enrolling at a schoolin Yogyakarta but her father raged that an unmarriedwoman could not go off on her own. Letting her out oftown on her own would be unsafe and would causenegative rumors. Instead, her father arranged amarriage to the son of his friend, the owner of anotherpesantren. Years went by and Anissa found herselftrapped in a miserable marriage. She was condemnedfor committing adultery and divorced. She then wenton to receive a higher education in Yogyakarta. Shebecame a well-known writer and role model for theyoung girls in pesantren. She remarried and returned tofight against the traditional trap in the pesantren.The oppression of women in Islamic societies aspresented in the film has resulted in controversy. Forexample, Ali Mustafa Yaqub, the head imam atJakarta’s Istiqlal Grand Mosque, urged that the film betaken out of cinemas to “correct the negativedepiction” of his religion. But female governmentminister Meutia Hatta argued that the film was animportant tool to correct centuries of tradition and thecreeping influence of religious hardliners drawinginspiration from the Middle East.Meanwhile the female journalists in Aceh said theyliked the way the film asks the audience to be moreopen-minded about girls in boarding schools.Sri Wahyuni of The Jakarta Post criticised the manynegative stereotypes in the film. “This is not what everywoman in Indonesia has experienced. I think we liveindependent lives and we can decide for ourselves. It’snot like in that movie,” she said.Telling her own story, Sri Wahyuni, 46, said she wasthe first girl from her community to go to university.Back then, her neighbors asked why she did not stopher education after high school. That should have beenenough, and then she could afford to have a family.“But at that time [it was not] because of [being] awomen or Muslim. They didn’t understand theimportance of education. My father was a civil servant,he knew its importance,” she explained. Wahyuni hasbecome a role model for girls in her hometown. Today,more and more families send their girls to attenduniversity.A young teacher, Rhamadinna Fatimah, shared similarviews about the film.“This film is only one point of view. It’s okay because itrepresents a lot of Muslim women in rural areas. But Iam in an urban area,” she said, adding she had nosimilar experiences herself.Fatimah said that she wished people to know that notall women in Indonesia faced such a predicament.“We’re just all right”. Fatimah was planning tocontinue her studies at San Francisco City College.The Work of the 2010/2011 API Fellows