Peace Journey
SRILI was established in 2015, as a follow-up initiative to a fellowship program taken by Ms. Wiwin Aminah Rochmawati, who was one of the co-founders of SRILI. The first members of SRILI involved 24 women who participated in an inter-faith dialogue forum representing various faiths and religious organizations. This initiative was also a response to the trend of hostile identity politics in Indonesia indicated by the rise of an intolerant narrative during the Jakarta Gubernatorial Election and various closing of religious places.
SRILI believes that a movement that promotes religious tolerance is essential for peace and that women have a strategic role in realizing such a goal, hence the name “Srikandi” or a heroine figure in the Indonesian context. One example of the role of women was their influence in raising a tolerant child, which holds the key to peace in the future.
The interviewee had a different pathway to becoming an activist. Ms. Erin became interested in joining a women's movement after being inspired by her lecturer during college studying women and religious issues.
Ms. Nana, a catholic, felt the need to actively advocate religious tolerance reflecting on the hostile identity politics during the Jakarta Gubernatorial Election, particularly against Indonesians of Chinese descent and minority religions.
Peace Journey
SRILI engages with religious intolerance or fundamentalism and any conflicts relating to it, which includes the forced closing of religious places by the locals. Responding to the conflict and other conflicts of a similar nature, SRILI engages in dialogues with the stakeholders which includes mediating the conflicting parties and communicating with the authorities to facilitate the dialogues.
Further, SRILI engages in capacity building for women, particularly on matters relating to gender sensitivity, religious tolerance, bias awareness, and conflict resolution skills. All members of SRILI are required to have such training and are expected to have the ability to respond to issues relating to religious intolerance or fundamentalism in their environment.
Success Stories
As a women's movement, SRILI has unique challenges various challenges including those internal in nature such as inactive members who are occupied with domestic care work. SRILI also faces challenges from external parties such as the reluctance of religious communities dominated by men to engage with SRILI.
SRILI becomes a place of learning for young women to become agents of change. One example is a member who then built an interfaith dialogue forum in Sumatra. Further, SRILI also pointed out their choice to avoid practical politics, hence maintaining the appearance of objectivity and neutrality. Such characteristic allows them to establish collaborative events and network with various parties including other religious organizations and government organizations (eg. the General Election Commission in which SRILI was invited to talk about tolerance in relation to political choice).
Both Ms. Erin and Ms. Nana explained that as women, they often are pressured to do their “role as a woman” including in domestic context and religious contexts (eg. women are expected to hold certain roles in their religious places). Ms. Erin and Ms. Nana recount their experience where other people demeaned their participation in SRILI, stating that volunteer work does not contribute to household finance and engaging with people of different religions may expose them to discrimination. Ms. Erin added that she had lost some friends for being active in SRILI because her participation was perceived as deviant to their religious teachings.
Ms. Erin and Ms. Nana highlight that confidently voicing their opinion is the key to responding to the challenges they face. They believe that often women felt that they could not have an opinion and thus suffered in silence. With such confidence, women will have the means to defend themselves in a society that often marginalizes and oppress them.