Identity Politics and the Discourse of Women’s Political Representation in Indonesia
Sri Lestari Wahyuningrum (University of Indonesia)
The year 1999 was a great importance for Indonesian people when the first free and fair election was held after the reform era started in a year before. For feminists, the election meant significantly as a moment for their interest be articulated. One of their demands was to gain larger portion for women’s representation in legislative. Following the result of the election which was only gave 8% seats for women in national parliament, women’s activists and NGOs took the initiative to disseminate and advocate the issue of women’s political representation. Although most people and political institution were quite pessimistic at the beginning, but later on the issue became an important agenda especially for the next 2004 election. Government and parliament included the recommendation for quota for women in the election law. Political party was finally using the issue to gain bigger number of voters. A poll held by a women’s journal showed that 82.0% of respondents in Jakarta affirmed that women’s candidate can accommodate women’s aspirations and 51% of them believed that women have enough quality and experience to be leaders (Jurnal Perempuan, 2004). In other words, the discourse of women’s representation constructed by this movement showed its significance in opening wider opportunity for women and women’s interests to be accepted in public realm.
As an identity politics, women’s movement demanding political representation was arguing in general for two considerations at the same time: the equality and justice argument, and essentialist argument of women’s specificity. Both are the claims used by two main perspectives in feminism: equality and difference perspective. As the two perspectives has been challenged for their emphasis on single ‘women’s perspective’ and silent other identity claims, I would like to see how the discursive practice of the movement for women’s political representation closed the possibility of other identity claims to be part of the representation demand.
