Legal Policy on Women's Protection in the National Family Law System
- Authors
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Hijriatu Sakinah
Universitas Sunan Gresik, Gresik, Indonesia
Author
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Ahmad Syaiful
Universiti Islam Sultan Sharif Ali, Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam
Author
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Abdel Malik
Marmara University, Istanbul, Türkiye
Author
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Nurhayati Nurhayati
Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt
Author
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Asif Hossain
International Islamic University Islamabad, Islamabad, Pakistan
Author
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- Keywords:
- Legal policy, Religious law, Social practice, State law, Women's protection
- Abstract
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The Indonesian family law system, which normatively promises protection for women, often negotiates with patriarchal structures, religious authorities, and social practices. This study seeks to develop a conceptual framework that integrates a legal-political perspective with an approach to protecting women's rights in the family law system. This study uses a normative juridical approach with a qualitative-analytical study design based on an analysis of the construction of legal norms, the direction of legislative policy, and the political dynamics of law that shape the protection of women in family law regulations and practices. The results show that the national family law system is in fact in a structural paradox, because the state normatively produces regulations that promise protection and equality. Still, in practice, legal politics formed through compromises between state ideology, religious authority, and patriarchal social structures often reproduce power relations that maintain women's vulnerability in the family and the courts. The main problem does not lie solely in the lack of legal norms, but in the configuration of power and legal culture that constructs how the law is interpreted and implemented. This study offers a new reading that combines the perspectives of legal politics, legal pluralism, and legal feminism to show that the protection of women will only be effective if legal reform moves from merely establishing regulations to transforming institutional structures, judicial paradigms, and the way the state mediates the relationship between state law, religious law, and social practices.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Hijriatu Sakinah, Ahmad Syaiful, Abdel Malik, Nurhayati Nurhayati, Asif Hossain (Author)

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