This project investigates the way gender relations are spatialized in the mosques of Yogyakarta, Indonesia, where exceptional mosques for the use of women were built in the nineteenth to the early twentieth century. It responds to the global issue of how gendered space contributes to gender relations outside of the non-Western context by questioning not only how gender conceptions dynamically permeate the architectural space of the mosques but also how architectural space helps to shape the larger landscape of gender relations in the Global South. Using data collected through combining ethnographic research, an archival investigation, and architectural documentation, the project argues that the layout of the mosques serves as the spatial translations of the control of gaze upon women and their sexuality that is maintained among Muslims. The control serves as a disciplinary mechanism of spatial and visual segregation that privileges men and posits the major mosque as a male space. Yet despite this apparent discrimination, as this work reveals, segregation can also facilitate women’s access to resources in public space such as the mosque, Islamic knowledge and interpretations, authority, and even religious leadership.

Tutin Aryanti is associate professor of architecture at Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia. She completed her doctoral degree in architecture with minor in gender and women’s studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Aryanti was awarded the International Convention of Asia Scholars Best Dissertation in Social Sciences 2015. Revolving around gender, space, and Islamic architecture, Aryanti’s works incorporate architecture with social, cultural issues to reconstruct architectural history from the previously marginalized users’ perspectives. Aryanti held numerous awards, such as Fulbright PhD Presidential Scholarship, the American Association of University Women International Fellowship and Home Project Grant, and the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities Graduate Student Fellowship. In 2023, she was the Regional Advisor for Southeast Asia for the Michigan State University’s “Science, Art, and Faith: Architectural Heritage and Islam” project, funded by Templeton Religion Trust, and a research fellow at KITLV, The Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Carribean Studies.