This essay is part of the series
First Responders: Crises, Indeterminacies, and (Joyful) Determination in the Global South

By Rachel Rinaldo

Well, the point is we had to be reckless, if we weren’t I would feel bad for the kids. For their education and food, we can still tolerate debt. If we don’t have it now maybe we can pay it next month but for education and food, we do whatever we can.

—Ibu Sari (Interview November 1, 2022) [1]

Ibu Sari [2]is a 43-year-old woman in the city of Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Yogyakarta is a city in the central part of Java, a densely populated region punctuated by rugged mountains and volcanoes. The urban area is home to over 2.5 million people, with millions more living in the surrounding areas. It is not a wealthy city, but it is Indonesia’s capital of arts and culture, a tourist destination due to its proximity to the ancient Hindu Buddhist temples of Borobudur and Prambanan, and a student haven—with universities attracting students from across the archipelago and beyond. Its large informal economy and mazes of streets and alleys generate a buzzing street life, with myriad food and drink kiosks and carts, street restaurants, and indoor and outdoor markets. Yogyakarta’s economy was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Students went home, tourists stayed away, and the streets were quiet for months. Many businesses closed permanently.

Sociologist Ann Swidler (1986) has written about how unsettled times provide opportunities for people to develop new ways of thinking and acting. During unsettled times, people often find that new situations require changes to old habits and beliefs. Things can no longer be taken for granted. Ideologies and worldviews compete for dominance as “people formulate, flesh out, and put into practice new habits of action” (280). In short, unsettled times prompt creative responses and adaptations. The COVID-19 pandemic and its still unfolding consequences exemplify an unsettled time, especially in the Global South, where precarity and indeterminacy have long been the grounds of everyday life for most people.

From September 2022 through July 2023, I conducted fieldwork about women, work, and family during and after the COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia, collaborating with Dr. Fina Itriyati of Gadjah Mada University (https://acadstaff.ugm.ac.id/fina) along with Hartmantyo Pradigto Utomo and Dinda Kamilia, research assistants for the sociology department. When we began our fieldwork, the city was just beginning to reopen.

Sari was one of 165 people, mostly women, whom we interviewed in and around Yogyakarta. Their narratives illustrate how Indonesians navigated the profound uncertainty generated by the global pandemic. We found that many women like Ibu Sari sought to support their families financially and undertook various kinds of “pivots.”  I use the term pivots to describe their efforts to find new modes of labor, which incuded increasing their working hours, selling belongings, finding new kinds of paid work, and starting or expanding businesses. In some cases, the pivot altered their economic trajectories for the better and generated new aspirations.

In recent years, Indonesia has experienced strong economic growth, and is on track to become one of the world’s largest economies. Yet in Indonesia, four out of five workers are estimated to be informally employed, and precarious work is increasingly common even among those with formal employment (Kalleberg, Hewison, and Shin 2021; Shin, Kalleberg, and Hewison 2023; World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 2023). Informality is a catch-all term that describes workers who are not covered by formal arrangements such as contracts or state benefits. Even in good times, income is uncertain for such workers, and they lack protections such as paid sick leave or retirement benefits. A crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic can easily push informal workers into greater precarity.

Since its transition to democracy in 1998, Indonesia has undergone extensive economic restructuring, including privatization of state enterprises and a shift to a more service-based economy.  Informality has long been an aspect of the Indonesian economy, but it has persisted as not enough formal jobs have been created, despite economic growth. The country has a limited social safety net, with social assistance programs providing cash transfers and subsidized or free food to the poorest households and members of vulnerable groups such as the elderly. During the pandemic, the Indonesian government launched the National Economic Recovery Program, which provided conditional cash transfers and electronic vouchers for food (Suryahadi, Izzati, and Yumna 2021). Regional governments like Yogyakarta’s also provided rice and basic foods to many neighborhoods, particularly during periods of mobility restrictions in 2020 and 2021. Such programs primarily targeted the poorest 25 percent of households, although middle-income people also had access to some of the benefits. Nevertheless, in our research, we found many people reporting that although state and local assistance ensured they did not go hungry, it was not enough to cover household needs. Informal workers like Sari, who only have income if they are running their businesses, had to find ways to continue earning money.

Indonesian women are especially likely to work in the informal economy. They sell food or other goods at street kiosks or in traditional markets, running businesses out of their homes (often food or clothing), work as caregivers or cleaners, and sometimes, in the growing gig economy as drivers. It is common for more educated, middle-class women to work informally as well—running small businesses out of their homes. Indeed, recent research has found that a rise in Indonesian female labor force participation during the pandemic was driven by women turning to informal work in the service and agricultural sectors (Halim, Hambali, and Purnamasari 2023).

For women, in addition to health risks and economic shock, the pandemic also magnified their already heavy burdens of family caregiving. In Indonesia, while it is common and widely accepted for women to earn income and work outside the house, the expectation that women are primarily responsible for family caregiving persists. In this majority Muslim country, religious and political institutions often emphasize women’s domestic responsibilities. This emphasis on care as a feminine responsibility also shapes women’s paid work, with many women earning money through food and care-oriented efforts. Childcare facilities are limited and even before the pandemic, many working mothers depended on extended family for childcare or tried to arrange their working hours around their children’s school. In more affluent milieus in Indonesia, children are often cared for by pekerja rumah tangga (household workers), but we found that even well-off mothers were burdened with care during the pandemic. When schools operated remotely for over a year, it was mostly mothers who took care of children at home and oversaw their online schooling. Yet even in the midst of all of this, it was common for women to undertake pivots.

 Ibu Sari: Striving to Support Her Family

Ibu Sari runs a type of afternoon/evening street food stall known as angkringan that is especially popular in Yogyakarta. Angkringan are outdoor food stalls, sometimes a wooden pushcart, at other times a plywood table covered by a tarp with a few plastic chairs for customers. Sari prepares and sells small, cooked dishes such as grilled tempeh, fried chicken, quail egg satay, and drinks such as hot ginger tea. Sari’s husband has a coffee stall at the same location. During the pandemic, especially when Indonesia was struck by the Delta variant, they were forced to close these businesses for about six months. As we sat on the veranda of her modest concrete house, Sari described how the couple had to dip into their savings, and she sold her jewelry and furniture. As soon as they could, they reopened, as they were determined to get out of debt. Sari also described how her angkringan was one of the only businesses open for quite a while, when the streets were still empty.

Ibu Sari was determined to continue paying tuition for her younger child’s private Muslim school, which was operating remotely. Not only did Sari struggle to make enough money for the family to eat, but at the same time she was also trying to keep everyone healthy and supervise her child’s remote school so that he didn’t fall too far behind. Sari was the primary caregiver in the household, making meals, cleaning, and taking care of children. During this difficult period, Ibu Sari placed her trust in her religion, Islam.

“I gave the kids vitamins, and I made sure they wore fabric masks when they went out. I was just desperate, if I’m not doing so… Who’s going to pay for my children’s needs? Desperate, the important thing is that my children have nutrition. I gave them vitamins, I also took vitamins, the rest of it I leave it to Allah” (Interview, November 1, 2022). Like many other Indonesians, she and her family were not always able to stay home during the pandemic.  Before vaccines became available in early 2021, she depended on masks and vitamins to provide protection from illness.

Ibu Sari’s efforts helped her family to survive through the most difficult stage of the pandemic. By the time we interviewed her in late 2023, street traffic had returned to Yogyakarta, and Sari said that her angkringan was making more money than before the pandemic. While Sari herself only has a junior high education, her first child was about to graduate from university and the younger one was still in his private school.

We met many other women who worked in the informal economy.  During the pandemic, they tried to find money in any way possible, and in some cases, they became family breadwinners, challenging the norm of men supporting households.

Ibu Lia: Becoming a Breadwinner

Before the pandemic, Ibu Lia had a small business making traditional sweets from her home. She was in her late 50s, with grown children who lived on their own, and her husband also had a small catering business. But when the pandemic hit, they both stopped getting orders. She recounted:

It didn’t completely stop…but because it was often quiet, sometimes we only opened for two days a week, and sometimes it was intermittent. My husband couldn’t work because he worked in catering. So, we gradually ran out of capital…Thank God, we received some assistance from the government… and our children sent us some money…My husband didn’t get any orders at all during the pandemic in his catering business.

—Ibu Lia, (Interview September 22, 2022)

When the city was largely shut down, they started walking around, selling food door-to-door. But they could only carry two bags each, so they couldn’t bring in much money. “When we went around, we could reach people who didn’t want to go out… it was to survive…we ate the food we sold, so to speak…Well, we had to be resourceful, if we weren’t resourceful, we would collapse… we couldn’t eat at all…” (September 22, 2022).

As time passed, people began ordering food again and Lia launched a new catering business from her home, with her husband working for her. By the time we interviewed her in late 2022, she was getting orders to provide food for events with up to 200 guests. She was involved in a women’s small business cooperative and trying to learn the latest digital platforms like Shopee and Tokopedia so that she could reach more customers. Lia was proud to have become the breadwinner for her family, even as she acknowledged that it was unusual to be in that position as a woman:

Well, my husband used to work in catering, but now he can’t work. As a woman, I still have to strive to survive. So, I have to make an effort to sell. I still have to support myself and my husband. How can I continue to live?…Women were more motivated [during the pandemic]… Yes, many husbands went around trying to find money, but we women, we tried to find a way to survive. Women played a bigger role than the men…We women, we work in rich people’s homes, for example. Cleaning, tidying up, doing chores. Men couldn’t possibly do the cleaning, tidying up, cooking. We can do it, women… We can’t just rely on our husbands. Hopefully, our husbands stay healthy. But if someday they get sick and can’t work, we can already rely on ourselves.

—Ibu Lia, (September 22, 2022)

It wasn’t just low-income women who struggled. The pandemic made the conditions of life more unsettled and precarious for everyone. Even Indonesians with more education and higher incomes were compelled to navigate a crisis that was constantly changing, with new variants, shifting guidance and rules, openings and closures, and uncertainty about when public life would return. With more resources to draw on than working-class women but similar uncertainties about the future, we found that many middle-class women also pivoted during the pandemic, starting new businesses or growing established initiatives.

Ibu Indah: Scaling Up a Business

Indah is a 37-year-old mother of three young children. Like many middle-class Indonesian mothers, she identifies as a housewife. Her husband did not want her to work outside the house after her children were born, and his income as an entrepreneur was enough to support the family. But she wanted to do something beyond housework, and in 2016, she started a frozen food business. During the pandemic, the business grew quickly, as frozen foods became a popular item to order in large quantities. Meanwhile, her husband’s business was in decline, so they joined forces. It was not easy managing a rapidly growing business as well as overseeing the children’s online school and doing all the cooking and cleaning. But by the time we interviewed Ibu Indah in early 2023, the children were back in school, and the business was thriving, with five full-time employees.

Indah expressed misgivings about whether she was living up to what she viewed as the Muslim ideal of a wife who prioritizes her husband and children. Coming from a more conservative religious background, she was conflicted about whether as a woman, she should be in a position of authority in the business and whether she was spending too much time away from her children. But she also voiced new aspirations for her career:

I want this business to grow broader, so I also want it not to stop, not just a momentary business, not just an occasional business, no. I want it to be a long-lasting business. I just want this business to be long-lasting, something I can pass on to my children.”

—Ibu Indah, (Interview June 16, 2023)

Perhaps because of the uncertainty and inequality of economic life in Indonesia, women like Indah aspire to build wealth that can help to provide a cushion for the next generation. While such individual resourcefulness carried many Indonesian women through the crisis, we also heard stories of how creative pivots intersected with solidarity efforts.

Ibu Natalia: Creativity and Mutual Aid

Ibu Natalia is a 32-year-old performance artist who lives alone and identifies as a waria (the Indonesian term for a person assigned male at birth who presents and identifies as a woman). Before the pandemic, she was able to make a modest living from her art. During the pandemic, she had to pivot quickly to online performances, and she also started organizing initiatives to help warias who were less able to make a living. Natalia explained:

Because like it or not, you have to keep thinking creatively and innovatively. Because yes, for me it is also one of the functions of an artist to always adapt quickly…So during the pandemic, actually it was even more busy because there were many people invited to the online performances, many people were curious about how I could survive during the pandemic, and I even made a fundraiser for waria friends in Yogyakarta because they couldn’t pay the rent for their boarding houses. Yes, I think that even during a pandemic, more creative ideas will emerge because you actually stay at home more.

—Ibu Natalia, (Interview February 2, 2023)

While for many Indonesians, the home became a space of intensified caregiving during the pandemic, for Natalia it also became a creative space. But Ibu Natalia also explained how caregiving and creativity were connected during the pandemic. She was involved with one of several activist community kitchens in Yogyakarta. These community kitchens connected with farmers in rural areas to bring food into the city and then took turns cooking and distributing it to community members. As Ibu Natalia described:

We went to Kulonprogo (a nearby rural district)…from Kulonprogo we were supported with vegetables, food from the farmers, we brought it to the city, in the city we distributed it to marginalized groups including waria, and the waria themselves opened a public kitchen. And some art collectors who had transgender friends here bought cows, goats [for the kitchen] so the support system was very strong.

—Ibu Natalia, (February 2, 2023)

These efforts have encouraged Natalia to think beyond her own art career. She has bought land outside the city. “My dream is to make a garden, open a small shop, cafe. So all waria can also learn many things there… From the purchase of land some transgender friends took the initiative to build a new community space and shelter, the Waria Crisis Center” (February 2, 2023). Opened in late 2021, the WCC allows ill or elderly transwomen to reside there for free and provides food and medicine and other support for basic needs.

Indonesia is often talked about as one of the Global South’s success stories, a country with a rapidly growing middle class, recovered from the political turmoil of past decades. Yet with so many people working in the informal economy, a crisis such as a pandemic magnifies the risks of precarity. The creative pivots of Indonesian women carried their families through this unsettled time. Some became breadwinners, challenging assumptions about who can or should support a household. Others improved their economic circumstances and raised their aspirations. Pivoting as an expression of women’s adaptability and creativity is worth celebrating, and yet, the state and society depend on this very adaptability and creativity of women to both provide care and earn income for families. Such adaptability may be most necessary for those who live with great indeterminacy.

Rachel Rinaldo is an associate professor of sociology and the faculty director of the Center for Asian Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. She studies gender, religion, social change, and development, and has been doing ethnographic research in Indonesia for over twenty years. She is currently working on a book manuscript based on this research in Yogyakarta.

Notes

[1] Ibu is the Indonesian honorific for a woman or mother.

[2] All names are pseudonyms to protect the privacy of research participants.

Works Cited

Ablaza, Christine Marie Jimenez; Alladi, Vinayak; Pape, Utz Johann. 2023. Indonesia’s Informal Economy: Measurement, Evidence, and a Research Agenda. World Bank Policy Research working paper, no. WPS 10608. Washington DC: World Bank Group. Accessed November 2, 2025:  https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/099435011152325553/idu025ef01630fdd504ae5085e90437dc8b1c171

Halim, Daniel, Sean Hambali, and Ririn Purnamasari. 2023. “Not All That It Seems: Narrowing of Gender Gaps in Employment during the Onset of covid-19 in Indonesia.”  World Bank Blogs, April 19, 2023. Accessed November 2, 2025: https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/developmenttalk/not-all-it-seems-narrowing-gender-gaps-employment-during-onset-covid-19-indonesia

Kalleberg, Arne L., Kevin Hewison, and Kwang-Yeong Shin. 2021. Precarious Asia: Global Capitalism and Work in Japan, South Korea, and Indonesia. Stanford, CA:  Stanford University Press.

Shin, Kwang-Yeong, Arne Kalleberg, and Kevin Hewison. 2023. “Precarious Work: A Global Perspective.” Sociology Compass 17(12):  e13136. https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/soc4.13136

Suryahadi, Asep., Al Izzati, Ridho, and Athia Yumna. 2021. “The Impact of Covid-19 and Social Protection Programs on Poverty in Indonesia.” Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies 57(3): 267–296. https://doi.org/10.1080/00074918.2021.2005519

Swidler, Ann. 1986. “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies.” American Sociological Review 51(2): 273-286.