The Politics of Gender in Indonesia’s Political Parties

Abstract

After the 1998 political reforms, political parties had been encouraged to practice gender politics, oriented to have equality by providing lots of affirmative spaces for women's involvement as the demand for political parties is more inclusive to women to take apart and carry cooperative programs for women improvement. Based on Law No. 17 of 2017 concerning general elections with a minimum quota of 30% must be female, there is a space for positive affirmation of gender politics in Indonesia's electoral democracy. This paper scrutinizes the basic foundations and practices of political parties in conducting gender politics through two things, namely the role of women in the power structure and the women's empowerment program. The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP) as Nationalist Ideology and Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) as Modernist Islam in the regional level, in Malang City, are as a case study. This research uses a descriptive qualitative method in which primary data collection techniques were conducted through observation and structured interviews, whereas documentation and library techniques collected secondary data. The results reveal that PDIP and PKS, in Malang City, have differences when practising gender politics in which PDIP is more inclusive based on competence and social networks but weak on women's empowerment programs and having a small number of female cadres whilst on the other hand, although it is still attached to patriarchal culture so that women are tough to reach the highest positions, PKS has many core female cadres and produces integrated programs to empower women.

The Role of Women Village Heads in Decision Making Process in Lembung Timur Village

“…Leadership does not include gender as a requirement, but rather how to characterize a person to become an ideal leader (Harmer, Savigny, & Ward, 2017). In Indonesia, research shows that women's leadership is quite successful (Da Meisa & Anzari, 2021), although it is undeniable that patriarchism remains one of the biggest obstacles (Hamka, 2016;Sihidi, Khanifah, & Romadhan, 2019;Muhajir, 2019). The same thing happened in Australia, Australia's first national paid, which succeeded in carrying out reforms (Newsome, 2017;Kakabadse, Tatli, Nicolopoulou, Tankibayeva, & Mouraviev, 2018), in Canada, women's leadership in handling Covid-19 succeeded in controlling cases because of their strong resilience, emotion, and vulnerability (Cherneski, 2020).…”