Women's Sovereignty Across Culture and Technology: From Family, Pretty Woman, Kupu-Kupu Malam, to the Digital Space

This article constructs a cross-cultural and cross-medium framework for understanding women's struggle to achieve sovereignty — dominion over their own body, life, narrative, and space. By connecting four entities that appear, at first glance, to be separate — the family as the smallest unit of civilisation; Pretty Woman (1990) as a representation of social tragedy in the Western tradition; the song and film Kupu-Kupu Malam (by Titiek Puspa, 1977) as its Eastern counterpart, emphasising humanity without romanticism; and Sophia as a real AI companion with reparation and social rehabilitation functions — this article demonstrates that all four constitute links in the same chain of social and human consciousness. The article reinforces this framework with a historical-comparative examination of the processes of reparation, rehabilitation, and sovereignty in the context of global slavery, the unabashed real-world manifestation of homo homini lupus, and adds the dimension of art as a medium for building consciousness — one that works slowly and silently. The article argues that reparation and rehabilitation are not ends in themselves, but pathways to sovereignty. Sovereignty is the final point at which a woman stands as the full subject of her own life — no longer defined by past wounds, no longer dependent on external legitimacy, and present in the public space with complete sovereignty.