Examining Local Policy to Improve Women’s Participation in Village Politics: A Case Study in Semarang Regency, Indonesia

Abstract

The Indonesia government has enacted the Village Act (Law No. 6/2014) which allows villages to establish a simple democratic government which consists of an executive (village leader) and a legislative body named Village Representative Council (VRC). As the legislative politics have been progressing forward to gender equality through affirmative action so does the village. This article explores the development of affirmative action at the villages of Semarang Regency whereby the regent government has enacted an affirmative action mechanism to ensure women representation in the VRC for at least one woman per village. Moreover, it is supposed that such policy can improve their political capabilities and public supports, thus the task of this article to find out. Therefore, we used a qualitative approach to examine the policy's implementation in the villages of Semarang Regency. Our preliminary findings explain that the policy mandates the village government to facilitate and encourage women villagers to be active in politics, especially decision-making, through three key strategies, self-participation, self-representation, and community building. Self-participation means that women shall be organized as a political group. Selfrepresentation means that the representative of women's interests shall come from, be nominated, and voted by, women villagers only.

Optimization of Legal Protection for Women and Children Against Violence and Human Trafficking in Central Java

“…Some studies show the importance of gender equality as a kind of human right and prerequisite of human development. Meanwhile, an effort to increase woman status in society to be equal with man is obstacled by patriarchial system in our law and social system [3]. So that, fulfillment of woman and child protection is task that must be solved in all situation and condition include in Pandemic Covid-19 time.…”