Sekolah Pemikiran Perempuan (SPP/ The School of Women’s Thought) is an initiative that intervenes in the processes of knowledge production that marginalize, invalidate, and erase women.

Informed by decolonial approach, we situate Third World women as knowing subjects and engage in “epistemic disobedience” to the colonial, capitalist, and heteropatriarchal knowledge system. We disrupt not through a formal ‘school’ but through guerrilla actions and interventions in various forms of knowledge exchange fora such as classes, lectures, workshops, and broadcasts. Launched by women in the field of arts and culture, SPP is a space to recognize and amplify women’s voices, knowledge, and expertise in this field and beyond; It cultivates diverse perspectives and conversations transcending the borders of disciplines.

SPP utilises the potentials of internet-based technology to traverse physical distance in the Indonesian archipelago and organise women living in the different islands as well as the Indonesian diaspora across the globe. SPP creates a knowledge exchange process using the Indonesian language. Despite being spoken by around 156 million people living in Indonesia, very little learning materials on women’s thought and history are created in this language, both concerning knowledge that is produced in the Indonesian archipelago and internationally. Through this process of exchange in Indonesian, we foreground women as valid producers of knowledge, challenging the Eurocentric knowledge system and the exclusion of women from local knowledge institutions, such as the state, customs, and religion.

Activities of SPP focus on accumulating learning materials that can be produced, shared and used in the Indonesian archipelago to collectively weave a system of knowledge which reflects the experience of women across cultures, geographical locations, and generations.

See our activities (some texts are only available in Indonesian language):