NEGOTIATING THE ROLE OF TRANSMIGRANT JAVANESE WOMEN IN DOMESTIC, PUBLIC, AND SOCIAL SPHERES

Abstrak

This article seek to explore the roles of transmigrant Javanese women as small scale business owners, housewife, and active participants in traditional Javanese cultural practices. The aim of this article is to understand how transmigrant Javanese women in Pagaruyung and Sibuak Village negotiate their multiple roles through agency, balancing between responsibilities in the domestic sphere, public sphere,and social sphere. The method used in this study is ethnography with emic approach in understanding behavior and culture from insider perspective through a series of participant observation, in-depth interviews, documentations, and fieldnotes.The findings shows that transmigrant Javanese women manage their multiple roles through exercising their agency of project in form of decision making, priority setting and time management. However, agency cannot always be fully exercised at certain moments because of existing cultural norms and power relation. This research holds significant not only for the transmigrant Javanese women community, but also provides valuable insights for readers interested in cultural and gender studies. It is important to understand how women negotiate multiple roles within the constrains of cultural norms and power structures.