Non-Sindhi women have quite a different experience in the sinetron industry in general, and in Sindhi-owned production studios in particular. Since the late 1980s the media production industry was open to women. In the previous decades media
production was basically a male world and those few women who worked there were the relatives of male professionals (Sen 1994b).148 But since the second half of the 1980s Indonesian women of the economic background similar to that of Sindhis (the so- called middle and middle-upper class) started entering production "in their own right as participants in the economy in the public sphere of society, and not only as daughters, wives and mothers of male members" (Sen 1998:37). Indonesian women worked in various capacities, from make-up artists to heads of production. They were present both "in the field" and in the administration. In fact, during the early years of commercial television women even outnumbered men in decision-making positions (Michalik 2013a:178).
148 In her work Sen focused on film production and did not discuss the situation in production of
television programs. The existing literature on television production in Indonesia in the period between the 1960s and the 1980s (Kitley 2000; Alfian & Chu 1981) has no information on the gender composition of television production teams. Given that during the above-mentioned period the state did not encourage women to join labour force and that television was under control of the state, I assume that the number of women in television production was also very small.
The sharp increase in the number of women taking various positions in media production was a result of considerable changes in the social, political and economic life in Indonesia in the late 1970s. Partially due to the pressure of international
organisations, the gender ideology of the New Order shifted from the ideal of women as "married, monogamous, child-bearing and rearing, house-keeping creatures" (Sen 1982:29) to contributors to various sectors of the state economy.149 By 1988, the government five-year plan acknowledged "women's skills and education that enabled women to take advantage of work opportunities in various sectors" (Sen 1998:43). The official recognition of women as a working force facilitated entrance and participation of female professionals in different aspects of media production. During the same period (the 1990s and the 2000s), for Sindhi women entering the media business through male relatives remained the only possible way.
At the same time, in the Sindhi-owned PHs certain positions seem unattainable for Indonesian female professionals. In chapter Five I argued that the decision-making power is distributed along ethnic lines where Indonesian Sindhis occupy the top
positions and non-Sindhi Indonesians are allocated the positions closer to the bottom of the social hierarchy. The picture of power distribution becomes more nuanced when gender is added to analysis. For example, there were several cases where Indonesian men in Sindhi-owned PHs held a position of department head on a permanent basis, but to the best of my knowledge such positions have never been occupied by Indonesian women.150 In most cases Indonesian female workers employed by the Sindhi companies are doing freelance or production assistance work.
The social organisation of the Sindhi-owned PHs is even more complex in terms of power distribution along ethnic and gender lines because Sindhi producers have a record of recruiting non-Sindhi Indian female media professionals for positions which seem out of reach for Indonesian women. In fact, MultiVision represents an interesting case in respect to power distribution along ethnicised gender lines, as the second most
149 The United Nations declared 1978 as International Women's year and organised several
global events promoting women's rights. Indonesia participated in these initiatives and made some changes in the existing policies: in 1978, "women" became a separate category in the five- year plan. In 1983 a "Junior Minister for Women's Affairs" became a cabinet position with the formal title "Office of the Minister of State for the Role of Women" (Sen 1998:42).
150 Although there are cases when female writers are in charge of scriptwriting groups, these
powerful figure in MultiVision is a female, Ms Anita Raghunath Whora, who is neither related to the MultiVision owners, nor a member of local Sindhi community. Despite that, Ms Anita, an Indian national, holds several important posts in the organisational structure of MultiVision and is the only female on the Directors' Board besides Raakhee and Karishma. Anita, who has worked in MultiVision almost since its establishment, was in charge of the creative department and responsible for all business negotiations with Astro Malaysia Holding, one of the biggest broadcasting television networks in Asia.151 Since 2010 Anita oversees the production of television programs made in cooperation with the Malaysian partners, another important sector of MultiVision international business expansion.152 Other Sindhi-owned PHs also have a record of
recruiting female workers from India and appointing them as heads of creative and design departments.
All these examples confirm that in sinetron production Sindhi women position themselves (and are being positioned) based not only on their gender but ethnicised gender. The practices of Sindhi women within the production are subject to the ethnic community norms, not the broader gender ideology of Indonesian society. Within the PHs owned by the Sindhis, Sindhi, non-Sindhi Indian and non-Sindhi Indonesian women (and men) are assigned different roles. Thus, both gender and ethnicity locate production workers in the organisational hierarchy of sinetron production.