Marriage and Piety

This article examines how the Pandalungan women in East Java understand their marital chores in marriage and feel that performing them is a sign of their piety by using the concepts of piety, gender, and marital tasks. Qualitative data are collected through interviews, using the snowball sampling technique to select interlocutors. The analysis indicates two main findings. First, Pandalungan women believe that domestic chores are their primary responsibilities in marriage, which must be performed by them rather than their husbands. These responsibilities are culturally and socially internalized as part of their gender role within the household structure. Second, women in the Pandalungan group perceive that a woman’s piety can be cultivated and expressed through marriage by being obedient to her husband and fulfilling her assigned marital tasks. This obedience is seen not only as a social expectation but also as a moral and religious duty. Therefore, women are obliged to perform their marital tasks as a form of devotion and expression of piety within marriage, which reflects the intersection between gender norms, cultural values, and religious understanding in their daily lives