Organizer: The Indonesia Project, Australia National University

Type/Location: Hybrid / Canberra, Australia

Description:

The percentage of female members in Indonesia’s national legislature (DPR-RI) reached 22.1% in the 2024 election: an increase of 1.2 percentage points from 2019. Despite candidate gender quotas, progress in female representation has been slow. This paper asks not only whether Indonesia’s quota system is fit for purpose, but more critically, is it doing more harm than good. We answer this question from data generated during the DPRD-Kota Medan election in 2024, in which 281 out of 289 female candidates lost. We followed the experiences of 24 female candidates through participant observation and in-depth pre- and post-election interviews. We find that the biggest beneficiaries of women’s campaigns, and hence quotas that increased demand for women candidates, were most often party elites and other (mostly male) candidates. In drawing attention to the significant costs of candidate quotas for women, against limited (but not insignificant) benefits, we make a case for reforming Indonesia’s quota system. The Indonesian case suggests new lines of enquiry in gender and politics research, namely examining how quotas change the terms of women’s (inequitable) incorporation into party-political systems.

About the Speaker:

Tanya Jakimow is an anthropologist at the CHL. Her current Australian Research Council Future Fellowship project concerns women's political labour and its relationship to the enduring problem of political over-/under-representation in local government in India, Indonesia, and Australia.

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