800 Indonesian women are collaborating with Asian writers and illustrators in a book collection that represents a fight for women’s empowerment and against male dominance.
One in four girls in Indonesia gets married before her 18th birthday, giving the Southeast Asian country one of the world’s highest numbers of child brides, according to the United Nations. The Asian book collection aims to spark conversations against old-fashioned restrictions for women in the nation.
The “Mighty Girls” stories feature both real life events, such as Indonesia’s first female journalist, and fictional ones, including a story of an Indonesian girl who is a student by day and a superheroine fighting plastic pollution by night.
“We don’t have a lot of books with strong female characters in Indonesia,” says Sofie Dewayani, one of the Indonesian authors, to the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “This will help us break the stereotypes about Indonesian women. There should be no boundaries for a woman to pursue her dreams.”
Starting October, the authors will be reading illustrated e-books to both boys and girls to fight stereotypes and inspire to end the restriction of girls to traditional roles.
