How does the Indonesian state engage women and shape their caregiving practices to align with development goals? This paper argues that one key strategy is the deployment of kader—community health volunteers who serve as intermediaries between state policies and families. Through institutionalized volunteerism, kader are tasked with delivering services which mostly focus on “educating” other women to become better mothers according to state-defined ideals. By tracing the historical trajectory of women’s roles in nation-building and examining contemporary stunting prevention programs, we show how the kader figure reflects the state’s ongoing reliance on gendered care labor to implement development interventions. Focusing on Indonesia’s stunting programs, we analyze how kader—often older, low-income women—navigate moral obligation, community respect, and structural inequality while carrying out digitalized, metrics-driven health responsibilities. Under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), their work increasingly involves producing health data used to demonstrate program effectiveness. We show that kader make visible the contradictions of care in contemporary development: they are essential yet structurally unsupported, vulnerable yet positioned to enforce state expectations that make other women vulnerable. This paper contributes to debates on gender, care, volunteerism, and the politics of development in postcolonial states.

Keywords: volunteerism, childcare, gendered labor, development, Indonesia