<![CDATA[One group of women that has rarely been discussed in studies of the New Order era is the women of the Yogyakarta Palace (Keraton Yogyakarta). These women lived within the intersection of palace customs and traditions, Islamic values, and the state-sponsored ideology of Ibuism that became dominant during the New Order period under the leadership of Sultan Hamengkubuwono IX. Employing a historical approach and representation theory, this study examines the discourse of gender sensitivity within the aristocratic environment through the public roles and activities of the Sultan’s wives. This study uses qualitative methods through literature research and observational interviews conducted with several informants. The findings demonstrate that the attempts of various encoders to represent palace women produced diverse outcomes. State encoders generated differing representations, palace encoders tended to maintain consistent representations, while media encoders produced more dominant representations. In this process, the Sultan’s wives were positioned as symbolic mediators through the use of various symbolic elements that enabled reinterpretation by audiences and society. During the New Order era, public representations of palace women through the figures of the Sultan’s wives were predominantly associated with socio-cultural domains and were rarely connected to political spheres.]]>
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