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What Works: Promoting Women’s Political Participation in Indonesia: Reflections on 17 Years of Candidate Quotas

Date : 2021-02-04

Title: What Works: Promoting Women’s Political Participation in Indonesia: Reflections on 17 Years of Candidate Quotas
Date: 19 Feb 2021 (Fri)
Time: 21:00 - 22:30 (HK Time)
Format: Online Zoom Seminar (Link will be provided to registered participants)
Language: English
Registration: http://bit.ly/3iCXEFp
Speaker: Ms. Siti Nurjanah (Director of the Women and Youth Development Institute of Indonesia, the Indonesia Chapter of Women’s Learning Partnership)
Moderator: Prof. Song Jing (Assistant Professor, Gender Studies Programme, CUHK)

Abstract:
The law on quotas for women in parliament was passed in 2003. More than a decade later, in 2014, Indonesia’s Election Commission (KPU) has disqualified from participation in parliamentary elections any party that does not include at least one woman in every third position on the ballot. The law on quotas for women in parliament has significantly quickened the process of women’s presence in leadership roles in public office and has contributed to a political dynamic that promotes a legally minded society in Indonesia, especially toward the need for equal opportunities for women. There are, however, challenges to the meaningful implementation of the quota law. For example, the absence of primaries, inherent in an open list ballot, means that political party leadership can choose unqualified female candidates merely to satisfy the quota law. The electoral system is still mainly designed to accommodate the elite and to control constituents. However, since the 2004 election, the number of parties that rely on candidates’ capital and their elite connections is declining.

I want to discuss what has worked during the 17 year since the adoption of the quota law and the challenges that remain. The electoral system in Indonesia is very costly, highly corrupt, and male dominated. Indonesian democracy, 20 years after the social movement that brought down the military government, is still fragile. The nonexistence of true opposition parties is dilemmatic. Direct criticism of government policies is often absent, but almost all parties are amenable to accommodation and reconciliation. At the same time, the push to have political parties move beyond the ordinary male dominated culture and to affirm women’s presence in politics is significant. Political parties themselves are the ones most resistant to the adoption of the quota system. The work of other democratic institutions, particularly the Election Commission and the General Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu), are therefore key to ensuring meaningful implementation of the quota law. Women who aspire to be politicians continue to struggle within a poor and uncertain political system, but with increasing success.

Speaker's biography:
Siti Nurjanah is the Director of the Women and Youth Development Institute of Indonesia, the Indonesia Chapter of Women’s Learning Partnership. Along with other civil society activists and academic communities, she leads a campaign to end child marriage, under implementation of Marriage Law Amendment in Indonesia. She was a journalist for several print media in the mid-1990s in Indonesia. She does research and develops training modules and programs designed to enhance women’s leadership, increase women’s political participation, include women in village governance, and support women human rights defenders. In the past 10 years, Nurjanah has been working to improve the capacity of female candidates for parliament through gender empowerment, leadership training, election education, campaign strategy, public speaking, and media outreach. She was a Reagan-Fascell Fellow at National Endowment for Democracy and Project 2049 Institute, both in Washington DC. Currently, she is a Resident Scholar at Women’s Studies Research Center of Brandeis University, United States.
 

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