Linda Rae Bennett

• PhD Medical Anthropology
• Professor (Full) at University of Melbourne

Sex, sexuality and sexual relationships are hotly debated in Indonesia, triggering complex and often passionate responses. This innovative volume explores these issues in a variety of ways. It highlights historical and newer forms of sexual diversity, as well as the social responses they provoke. It critiques differing representations of sexuality,...

In popular debates about reproductive and sexual rights, formal religions, especially Islam, are seen as barriers providing institutional and ideological resistance to women's realization of reproductive and social autonomy. This book challenges this simplified view of Islam. Based on original fieldwork in Eastern Indonesia, the book explores the c...

Background Indonesia has high levels of biological need for infertility treatment, great sociological and psychological demand for children, and yet existing infertility services are underutilized. Access to adequate comprehensive reproductive health services, including infertility care, is a basic reproductive right regardless of the economic circ...

This study investigated the reproductive knowledge and patient education needs of 212 female Indonesian infertility patients. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted from July to September 2011 by married women, 18 to 45 years old, seeking infertility care from clinics in Jakarta, Surabaya and Denpasar. Participants were literate, the sampl...

This article contributes to cross-cultural understandings of gender-based violence by examining women's definitions and experiences of domestic violence in Eastern Indonesia. The research was part of a larger study of human rights in maternal and neonatal health and involved a survey that integrated common anthropological practices in its developme...

In Indonesia, knowledge of parents’ experiences of their daughters’ HPV vaccination in school settings is limited. As Indonesia seeks to scale up its HPV vaccination program nationwide, parents’ perspectives hold important insights into how elements of the vaccination model can be sustained and improved. This study explored mothers’ experiences of...

Objective: In 2016, Indonesia introduced its Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination demonstration program for girls in grades 5 and 6 of primary school, to reduce cervical cancer (CC) burden in selected provinces and test the viability of nationwide vaccination. This study explored schoolgirls' experience of school-based HPV vaccination, their kno...

Across Pacific Island countries, women and men are disproportionately affected by several risk factors for infertility, including sexually transmissible infections, complications from unsafe abortions, postpartum sepsis, obesity, diabetes, tobacco smoking and excessive alcohol consumption. Despite this, little is known about community awareness of...

Background Gynaecological cancers are among the most prevalent cancers worldwide, with profound effects on the lives of women and their families. In this critical review, we explore the impacts of these cancers on quality of life (QOL) of women in Asian countries, and highlight areas for future inquiry. Methods A systematic search of the literatur...

Background Cervical cancer (CC) is the second most common female cancer. In Indonesia, national CC screening coverage is low at 12%, highlighting the need to investigate facilitators and barriers to screening. Objective This review synthesises research on facilitators and barriers to the delivery and uptake of CC screening; analyses them in terms...

This paper reflects on the processes and findings of collaborative research with vulnerable urban Indonesian communities conducted by Indonesian and Australian researchers from June to October 2020. The goals were to understand the impact of COVID-19 on: 1) the sexual and reproductive health (SRH) of vulnerable urban communities, 2) the impact of t...

As Indonesia grapples with COVID-19, it remains vital that other crucial health interventions continue to be prioritised to minimise the overall health footprint of the epidemic. Cervical cancer is a preventable disease, yet it is the most lethal female cancer in Indonesia, responsible for more than 18,000 deaths each year. Thanks to the efforts of...

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a violation of women’s human rights and dramatically increases women’s vulnerability to sexual and reproductive health morbidities. This article examines young iTaukei (Indigenous Fijian) women’s experiences of, and responses to, nonphysical forms of coercion in romantic relationships. It draws on ethnographic res...

Since the early 1990s technologies to prevent and detect cervical cancer (CC) have been deployed at the population level across Western Europe, the UK, Northern America and Australasia, markedly reducing the burden of CC in high-income countries. Researchers recently projected the elimination of CC in Australia by 2035 (1), and the possibility that...

This paper explores young iTaukei (Indigenous Fijian) women’s perceptions and experiences of sexual risk. It draws on qualitative data collected in Suva, Fiji in 2011 and 2012. Participants included iTaukei female university students aged 18–29 years. We describe nine forms of sexual risk identified by young iTaukei women, and group these risks int...

Indonesia has among the highest cervical cancer mortality rates in the world; each day 50 women die from and 58 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer in the country. The absence of a national screening program means that Indonesian women are typically diagnosed at more advanced stages of cervical cancer, for which treatment is more invasive and...

Background: Cervical cancer (CC) is a leading cause of cancer deaths among Indonesian women. Pilot prevention programs, including human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination for young adolescent girls, and cervical screening for women, have been implemented. However, many communities are yet to receive these interventions, nor targeted education regardi...

In March 1997, Indonesia's authoritarian President Suharto was re-elected for a seventh five-year term. Suharto's re-election occurred just as the Asian economic crisis was reaching its peak. In July 1997, the Thai baht crashed, resulting in a global loss of confidence among international businesses in Asian currencies. By January 1998, the Indones...

In Indonesia fertility has plateaued for more than a decade. Over the same period Indonesian women have increasingly accessed contraception via the private sector. Our qualitative inquiry into the contraceptive preferences of middle class women in urban Yogyakarta revealed limited interest in and intent to use biomedical and hormonal contraceptive...

Background: Despite several decades of investment into family planning and maternal health systems strengthening, Indonesia's maternal mortality ratio remains among the highest in Southeast Asia. Among postpartum women unmet need for family planning is greater than at any other time, thus there is great potential to improve the reproductive health...

Seksualitas di Indonesia

This special issue explores morality agendas in the recent Indonesian context, and in doing so reveals the dynamism of morality debates as they occur in Indonesia and in broader Southeast Asian perspectives. In this Introduction we illustrate how morality (or the perceived lack of morality) acted in part as the impetus for reformasi (reformation),...

Exclusive breastfeeding is embedded in National Health Law and Regulation in Indonesia and is vigorously promoted by health workers, breastfeeding counsellors and religious leaders. This article explores the transformation of state legislation into breastfeeding promotions that are imbued with moralising assumptions directed at expectant women, new...

In this introduction we consider how people who have difficulties achieving "natural" parenthood seek to form families, and their experiences of reproductive negotiations and losses in this pursuit. We highlight gaps in the literature on infertility and loss globally, and identify how the special edition addresses the dearth of research in this fie...

When combined primary and secondary infertility affect up to 21% of Indonesian couples. Based on ethnographic field work with married heterosexual couples, I explore how intra-family adoption represents a culturally and religiously acceptable pathway to family formation for couples without access to assisted reproductive technologies. I examine how...

This qualitative study explored in depth the lived experiences of middle class women in Yogyakarta, Indonesia as they attempted to juggle their unpaid reproductive work with paid work in the formal sector or with university study. Our analysis reveals the challenges encountered by middle class women when they decide to exclusively breastfeed whilst...

In this article I demonstrate what can be learnt from the indigenous healing knowledge and practices of traditional Sasak midwives on Lombok island in eastern Indonesia. I focus on the treatment of infertility, contrasting the differential experiences of Sasak women when they consult traditional midwives and biomedical doctors. Women’s and midwives...

This article focuses on Indonesian adolescents who are wives and mothers, demonstrating how early marriage and adolescent motherhood are normative among women from poor Sasak communities in Western Lombok. It is based on ethnographic research with 28 young mothers that included focus group discussions, in depth interviews, and observations. Demogra...

Introduction There is lack of consensus about the adverse effects of the worldwide growing problem of obesity on the outcome of assisted reproductive technologies in general (In 2006, the British Fertility Society, which represents professionals working with assisted conception, issued recommendations on eligibility for IVF in the National Health S...

Selected survey data on future aspirations and expectations from 3565 young Indonesians are presented in this study. Muslim-majority Indonesia is an Asian economic success story. The economy has seen solid growth, leading to an expansion of the private sector. The upward credentialling of the labour market and the rapid growth of the middle class h...

Sexuality and sex education cannot be divorced from the moral values of the societies within which we must negotiate our sexual identities and relationships. Rather than pandering to the moral panic that is too often associated with the provision of sex education in non‐secular societies where religion is more visibly active in shaping sexual ideal...

This paper explores how single women in the regional Indonesian city of Mataram express sexual desire in a social, cultural and political climate that idealizes the confinement of female sexuality within marriage. It is based on 21 months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted with single women, their families and health care providers. Success for yo...

Violence against women is a violation of women's human rights and a priority public health issue. It is endemic worldwide. While much has been written about it in industrialized societies, there has been relatively little attention given to such violence in Asian societies. This book addresses the structural and interpersonal violences to which wom...

Induced abortion is widely practised in Indonesia by both married and unmarried women. This paper draws on ethnographic research, conducted between 1996 and 1998, which focused on reproductive health and sexuality among young single women on the island of Lombok in Eastern indonesia. While abortion for married women is tacitly accepted especially f...

Induced abortion is widely practised in Indonesia by both married and unmarried women. This paper draws on ethnographic research, conducted between 1996 and 1998, which focused on reproductive health and sexuality among young single women on the island of Lombok in Eastern Indonesia. While abortion for married women is tacitly accepted, especially...