Maria Ulfah is a female warrior whose name may be unfamiliar to some student circles. It was her ideas and stance to improve the conditions of women in Indonesia that she consistently fought for throughout her life. She was the one who initiated Mother’s Day. He also worked to create a marriage law in Indonesia. Maria Ulfah was born in Serang, West Java, on 18 August 1911. She was the daughter of R.A.A. Mohammad Achmad (1923-1939), Regent of Kuningan during the Dutch East Indies era. Kangjeng Dalem Mohammad Achmad belongs to the Djajadiningrat family from Banten. He invited Maria Ulfah to study at AMS (Algemene Middlebare School, today’s high school level) until she graduated in 1929 and continued her education in Europe when Maria Ulfah accompanied her father, who was assigned to study cooperatives in the Netherlands. His father, Moehamad Achmad, wanted the eldest of three brothers to become a doctor.
Maria Ulfah and her friends not only helped uphold the sovereignty of the Republic of Indonesia but also actively fought for equal dignity for women and men, learning opportunities for women, and eradicating illiteracy among women. Maria Ulfah lived in a time when women experienced and faced various problems in marriage, such as the practice of marrying underage children, the existence of forced marriages carried out by parents on their daughters, irresponsible polygamy, arbitrary divorce (talaq) on the part of the husband; There is no explicit registration of marriages so that marriages do not have legal evidence.
This condition gave birth to an ideal and determination to fight to improve women’s position in marriage through law. Law has a coercive nature, and law can be a means of driving change. Conditions of injustice experienced by women in marriage can be resolved through law because these conditions are created by applying deviant customary law and religious law. Apart from that, there is no guarantee of fair legal certainty for women.