Historian Highlights Five Influential Women in East Kalimantan's Civilisation

Samarinda (ANTARA) - Public Historian of East Kalimantan (Kaltim), Muhammad Sarip, has examined the life stories of five influential women who made significant contributions to building civilisation and fostering national awareness in the province.

“These five women prove that women have had a role, leadership capacity, and extraordinary courage in various fields during their respective times,” said Sarip in Samarinda on Sunday.

The first female figure is Aminah Syukur, who, along with her husband, founded the Meisje School in 1928 as a venue for education specifically for indigenous female students to break free from the shackles of educational marginalisation during the colonial era.

In the era of the independence movement, there is the second figure, Salbiah, as a heroine administrator of the Indonesian Youth Union who boldly ignited the spirit of nationalism at the All-Kalimantan Indonesian Youth Congress in 1948 in Barabai.

The public historian also elaborated on the achievements of the fourth figure, a woman from the Chinese ethnic group named Nyonya Lo Beng Long alias Dorinawati Samalo, who selflessly donated her residence in 1962 as the foundational building for the establishment of the Mulawarman University, the pride of Kaltim, as a higher education institution.

The detailed life stories of the struggles of these five unforgettable female figures are also immortalised in a book by Sarip and Alisya Anastasya titled “Women in East Kalimantan: Forgotten History, the Kartini Myth, and Gender Reality”.