Philosophical Semiotics of Legal Absence: A Feminist Critique of Women’s Sexual Exploitation in Indonesia’s Nickel Mining

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Document Type : Research Paper

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Faculty of Law, Universitas Diponegoro

Abstract

This study investigates the sexual exploitation of women in Indonesia’s nickel mining regions through the feminist legal framework of semiotics of absence, which reveals systemic omissions in legal texts and practices that uphold patriarchal and extractive power. Across Central Halmahera, Morowali, and Sorowako, the influx of male migrant workers has expanded local sex economies, yet the Mining Law, Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA), and public morality regulations fail to acknowledge this causal link. Legal subjects are defined as the state, corporations, and workers, while women appear only as beneficiaries of corporate social responsibility (CSR), lacking enforceable legal rights. Law enforcement practices, including raids on guesthouses and cafés, performatively reinforce these semiotic structures, rendering women visible solely as moral subjects, while corporate and regulatory accountability remains absent. Syntagmatic analysis of the Mining Law and related documents highlights how the semiotic architecture of law actively reproduces women’s invisibility by excluding categories for sexual impacts or socio-economic vulnerabilities. The study proposes semiotic reform: integrating legal categories for women’s sexual and social impacts into EIAs, establishing gender due diligence mechanisms, expanding legal subjectivity to include affected women, and redirecting enforcement to ensure corporate accountability. Without altering the semiotic foundations, legal amendments or CSR initiatives will merely reproduce systemic gender subordination. The findings demonstrate that recognition of women’s socio-economic realities, and integration of gender and political-economic considerations into legal language, is essential for genuine reform, revealing that law is not only a normative tool but a structural instrument shaping social and economic hierarchies in extractive industries.

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Journal of Philosophical Investigations

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 23 June 2026

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