However, the Indonesian women’s periodicals from the late 1940s until the early 1960s and the transnational women’s organizational records, such as WIDF Collection and Archief Nederlandse Vrouwenbeweging show an explosion of articles and accounts addressing transnational activities and exchanges between Indonesian women and other women from overseas, mainly the Netherlands. By focusing on the transnational activities of Indonesian women in the post-1945 transitional decades, this presentation analyses how women engaged in the decolonial movement, which intertwined with the Cold War contestation and the Third World formation. It shows that the decolonial movement during that period was emancipatory in various ways. It also reveals that Indonesian women succeeded in exercising their citizenship rights, regaining some of the protagonist roles they had not enjoyed in the earlier decade, and reshaping linkages among women’s movement organizations and other political currents and movements. Subsequently, it challenges the hegemonic narrative of feminism and transnational women’s history, which have been perceived as quintessentially Western.

Widya Fitria Ningsih is a lecturer at the Department of History, Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM). She obtained her PhD in political history from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in 2022, researching women’s engagement in the Indonesian nation-state formation. Her research interests encompass women’s and gender history, the decolonial movement, the Cold War, transnational migration, citizenship, food sovereignty and everyday practice. She coordinates the NWO-funded project Restituting, Reconnecting, Reimagining Sound Heritage (Re:Sound) [2024-2028], led by prof. dr. Sri Margana (UGM), in collaboration with meLê yamomo and Barbara Titus from the UvA. The project employs sound recordings from the Jaap Kunst Collection and recorded broadcasts from Beeld & Geluid as sources for historical research into the colonial history of Indonesia and the Netherlands.

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