Of all Indonesian citizens marriages were al so registered in the 1930 census. The following criteria were used:
single: people who had never been married.
married: people who were looked upon as such by their neighbours, whether any formalities had been gone through or not.
widow: she who had been bereft of her husband by death, and had not married since.
widower: he who had lost his wife through death, and had not married since.
divorced: was a women who had left her husband and not married since and a man who had left his last wife and had not married since. The disunion of a marriage by a judge was looked upon as a divorce,also the pronouncing of the talak in the case of women and in the case of a man the pronouncing of the talak over his last wife by himself.
The data obtained about the population of the D.I. Jogjakarta arranged according to the age-groups, result in the following survey:
Table II – 12
Marital Status of the Indonesian population of the D.I. Jogjakarta in 1930, according to the
age-groups.
In the first and second age-groups we find the figures of a slight number of children’s marriages. In some parts of the province of Central-Java these figures are much higher. In the kabupaten Kebumen well over 4 per cent. Of the children were married. There were some regions with 1-2 per cent. Of married children, but the remaining part of Central-Java had about 0.5 – 0.7 per cent. The 0.18 percentage of children’s marriages in Jogjakarta can be called relatively low. The number of married girls being four times as great as the number of married boys, we can deduce from this that a number of girls must be married to grown-up men, which the number of very young widows made us presume already. The motives for children’s marriages cannot be accounted for means of these figures. The comparatively great number of divorced girls seen against the background of the number of children’s marriages, confirms the impression that children’s marriages often have a short duration. In Tjilatjap a very high figure was found. There 0.5 percent. Of the girls of the second age-group was divorced. In the third age-group the ratio in the case of the men of the D.I. Jogjakarta is almost the same as those of Central – and East–Java.
Only in West-Java this appeared to be different. In the D.I. Jogjakarta are more single men and far fewer divorced men than in West-Java. This should point to a higher age at the time of marriage, and to, a lower number of divorces in the D.I. Jogjakarta than in West-Java.
Age at the time of marriage.
We find indications of higher age at the time of marriage in the D.I. Jogjakarta in the percentage of unmarried woman in the various provinces. This is considerably higher in the D.I. Jogjakarta than elsewhere, while the percentage of unmarried men is relatively high, and it is surpassed by the percentage of East-Java only.
Table II - 13
Some comparative figures about the marital status of the adult population in the provinces of Java
in 1930.
The cause of the percentage of unmarried adult men being much higher than that of the number of adult women, is that girls marry younger as a rule. Many single young women are married by divorced men and widowers. The percentage of unmarried women slightly varies from one kabupaten to another. The highest percentage is found in Kulon Progo viz. 11 per cent. The city of Jogjakarta had 10.7 per cent. And among the other kabupatens Sleman and Gunung Kidul had just over 9 per cent. The number of divorces can be estimated from the percentage of divorced women, for these women cannot easily marry again, As a rule divorced men marry young unmarried women, so that the percentage of divorced men cannot give us any idea of the frequency of divorces. The percentage of divorced women is lowest in the D.I. Jogjakarta (cf. Table II – 13). Another indication is the high percentage of unmarried women. If there are few divorced men the “demand” for unmarried young women is small, and their number greater, which is the case in the D.I. Jogjakarta. The number of divorces registered in the years 1929 – 1931 by the registry office of religion affairs in the provinces West- and East-Java and in the D.I. Jogjakarta are expressed in divorces per 1,000 married men, and collected in the following table II – 14 (figures of the 1930 census).
Table II – 14
Number of divorces in the D.I. Jogjakarta and the other provinces of Java in the period 1929 – 1931
(per 1,000 married men in 1930).
Number of divorces means the number of divorces less the number of revocations. From these figures appears the relatively small number divorces in the D.I. Jogjakarta. Whether the registration of divorces was exhaustive and reliable is not sure, because no further data are available. The more recent figures of the Jogjakarta population concerning divorces cannot be expressed in divorces per 1,000 married men, because those figures are not available. It is only possible to compare the number of marriages and the number of divorces in the period 1956 – 1958. These figures are collected in table II-15. From these figures one is led to presume that divorce is not rare in the D.I. Jogjakarta today.
Polygamy
The number of married women being greater than that of married men in the third age-group, points to the occurrence of polygamy. In the D.I. Jogjakarta 2.3 per cent. Of the adult married men appeared to be married to a plurality of wives at the same time. A percentage also found in the other provinces of Java. The greater number of these (94 per cent.) was married to two wives, and only a few to three or four. As compared to the 1920 figures polygamy has increased in all the provinces of Java. In the D.I. Jogjakarta this happened to the greatest extents. In 1920 1.4 per cent. Of the married men were polygamists, and in 1930 2.3 per cent. This increase took place in the kabupatens Sleman, Bantul, and Kulon Progo (south), and to smaller extent in Gunung Kidul and Kudul Progo (north). In the other provinces of Java the occurrence of polygamy among the adult married men was:Central-Java 2.2%; East-Java 1.6% and West-Java 1.8% at 1930. The more recent figures of polygamy in the D.I. Jogjakarta are given in table II-15.
Table II - 15
Number of marriages and divorces in the period 1956-1958 in the D.I. Jogjakarta.
The absolute figures of the polygamous marriages in 1956-1958 are given in this table. When compared with the total number of marriages in this period more than 7% of all these marriages were polygamous. In 97% of the cases it concerned marriages to a second wife. Only 175 men married a third and 9 men married a fourth wife. There is no reason to assume that polygamy lessened in the period 1930 till 1958.