Nederlandsch Zendingsvereeniging’s Efforts to Improve the Position of Women in the Society of West Java

Abstract

In this article, I argue that Nederlandsch Zendingsvereeniging (NZV) missionaries played an important role in improving the position of women in the society of West Java. Although their main motivation was the spreading of Christianity, they were fully aware of perspectives on the inferior status of women and were concerned to improve the latter’s position. The missionaries aimed to regulate marriage and address the problem of concubinage, establish schools for women, accept women as part of the staff in their offices, provide space for women to vote for and become church councillors, and even dared to allow women to be ministers in at least one congregation when this had been a proscribed subject. But their efforts seemed so exclusively confined to Christian circles, that their influence did not go beyond to the wider community.