Challenges of Women’s Representation in 2019
In the 2019 general election, the affirmative policy on women’s representation in legislative bodies will be implemented for the fourth time.
In the 2019 general election, the affirmative policy on women’s representation in legislative bodies will be implemented for the fourth time.
The affirmative policy has gone through a number of regulatory changes that point to the development of women’s representation in politics. It all began with the issuance of a historic legislation, Article 65 of Law No. 12/2003, which was the first to stipulate that political parties participating in the elections must comprise at least 30 percent women among their legislative candidates.
This stipulation evolved as the Election Law was revised in 2008 and in 2012 to include a more detailed affirmative policy. Apart from the 30 percent rule, an additional stipulation was incorporated on how to draft the list of candidates: at least one of every three consecutive candidates on the list must be a woman. This stipulation is retained in Law No. 7/2017, the legal basis for the 2019 general elections (specifically Article 245 and Article 246, Point 2).
Women’s representation
The implementation of the affirmative policy in the last three elections (in 2004, 2009 and 2014) is an achievement of women’s representation in legislative bodies. In the 1999 general election, the first in the Reform era and with no affirmative policy in place, only 9 percent of lawmakers in the House of Representatives were women, or 46 out of 500 legislators.
With the affirmative policy for women’s representation implemented in the 2004 election, 65 of 550 House members were women (11.8 percent).
The affirmative-plus policy (comprising the 30 percent and one-of-three candidates rules) in 2009 resulted in better representation of women at the House, at 101 out of 560 members (18 percent). However, in the 2014 election with the same affirmation-plus policy, the number of women elected to the House declined to 97 (17.3 percent).
Women’s representation at regional legislative councils (DPRDs) has also increased in the last two elections. However, the DPRDs of several regencies still have zero female members.
Reflecting on the results of the 2014 election, the question now is: How will women fare in the 2019 election for the House and DPRDs across the country? Will the number of women lawmakers go up, down, or stay the same? We need to check a few things to find the answer.
Operational regulations that require political parties to adhere to the affirmative policy remain a strategic issue. This includes General Elections Commission (KPU) Regulation No. 7/2013 on House and DPRD candidacies, which mandates that political parties adhere to affirmative policy requirements as stipulated in Law No. 8/2012 on drawing up their list of candidates for every electoral district (dapil).
Non-compliance will result in the KPU ruling as ineligible the offending party’s candidates in relevant electoral districts. Consequently, the party will need to correct its list of candidates. This stipulation ensures that women’s representation in all electoral districts will be a minimum 30 percent.
Political parties are required to adhere to the 30 percent rule not only nationwide, but also in each electoral district. This stipulation ensures a broader opportunity for women to be elected in each electoral district. Assuming that the affirmative policy stipulation for nominating women lawmakers remains the same in the Election Law, the KPU has no reason not to make the same stipulation.
Women’s potential
Women, in fact, have high electoral potential. The three women elected to the House for the 2014-2019 term gained the highest number of votes in their respective electoral districts in the 2014 election. All three are from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P): Karolin Margaret Natasa (West Kalimantan, 397,481 votes, ranked first in the highest number of votes), Puan Maharani (Central Java District V, 369,927 votes, ranked second) and Rieke Diah Pitaloka (West Java District VII, 255,064 votes, ranked fourth).
This potential is also reflected in the number of voters casting their ballot for women candidates. The University of Indonesia’s Center for Political Studies (Puskapol UI) data shows that 16 million votes (22.45 percent of all votes) were cast for women candidates in the 2009 election. In 2014, 23 percent of all votes were cast for women candidates. This indicates a gap between the number of votes cast for women candidates (23 percent) and the number of women lawmakers at the House (17 percent).
In terms of regulation, this gap is due to the legislative electoral threshold, under which political parties gaining a minimum 3.5 percent of votes nationwide determine the distribution of House seats. Another strategic cause for this is the minimum amount of women legislative candidates filling the No. 1 spot on the parties’ candidate lists.
Puskapol UI’s 2014 data shows that legislative candidates listed as No. 1 have a greater chance of being elected. A majority of House members (62.14 percent) were the No. 1 candidate on their respective parties’ list. This is significantly larger than House members who were candidates No. 2 (16.96 percent) or No. 3 (4.46 percent).
A 2013 study by the Indonesian Parliamentary Watch (Formappi) shows that only a small proportion of women candidates are No. 1 on their parties’ list, or a mere 140 of 2,465 women candidates (5.7 percent). Most women candidates are No. 3 (25.7 percent) or No. 6 (19.9 percent) on these lists. The fact remains that, in an open-list proportional system based on majority votes, a legislative candidate’s position on the list has a great impact on their chances of being elected.
It must be noted that women’s representation in elections – from 2004 to 2014 – was implemented without any known affirmative policy in the internal regulations of political parties. Political parties appear to view the affirmative policy merely in administrative terms, that is, as an electoral requirement.
Political parties have yet to view affirmative policies as part of their responsibility to improve the quality of equal and fair representation. KPU Regulation No. 7/2013 successfully increased the number of women candidates in every electoral district, with women accounting for 37.3 percent of House candidates. However, without affirmative stipulations in the parties’ internal regulations, the results will remain insignificant, with women accounting for only 17.3 percent of elected House members.
Incorporating affirmative stipulations in party regulations will become a strategic requirement to increase the future representation of women in politics. Women could not be excluded from the development of political parties in the past 20 years since the reform era.
In fact, the Political Party Law provides space for women’s representation in political parties at all levels of management, from the subdistrict to the city/regency, and from the provincial to the central board levels.
Women must join political parties not merely as decorations, but as a consequence of citizens’ participatory rights to express their interests formally through political parties. Women are involved in political parties, working voluntarily for their parties’ progress, remaining loyal to their parties’ policies, and yet, they are continuously sidelined when their parties face multiple interests in the contest for power.
Limited capacity
At least two things are necessary to contest in an open-list proportional system: financial capital and an electoral base. Women are commonly limited in these two areas.
Female leadership figures are commonly found in many parties, especially at the regional level. They generally have strong grassroots support, they work voluntarily for the sake of their parties, they are strong in facing party dynamics and yet they have minimum financial capital.
Their parties express their appreciation by placing them on lists at rankings with low electability (No. 3, No. 6, No. 9 and so on), and they are often defeated in the elections by new members – both men and women – with strong finances but poor voter bases.
Therefore, political parties must incorporate these two factors (financial capital and voter base) with internal affirmative regulations. First, women candidates must be listed at No. 1 in at least 30 percent of electoral districts. This will increase their chances of being elected.
Second, women candidates that are listed at No. 1 must be strong candidates that have strong grassroots support, are highly active in party activities and do not possess adequate financial capital. This way, parties can still include candidates with strong financial backing without sidelining candidates with strong potential but with less financial capital who have worked hard to advance the party.
The true challenge of women’s representation in politics does not merely involve increasing the number of women lawmakers. This is merely a doorway to equal representation to achieve people’s welfare.
It is highly important that political parties take a strategic role to arrive at this doorway. Eligible political parties still have time to consider implementing affirmative policies internally ahead of the official announcement of legislative candidates in May. It is hoped that this will all lead to a better election results in 2019.
SRI EKO BUDI WARDANI, Political Science Lecturer, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Indonesia