Jakarta – The Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem) highlights the lack of women’s representation in politics. Perludem encourages women to be given space in politics.
“Yes, in reality there are still very few female regional head candidates, let alone those who are elected. There are many factors, such as violence against women in politics,” said Perludem researcher Annisa Alfath in her statement, Thursday (15/8/2024).
Annisa said there are three factors why there are still few women in politics, let alone those who become regional heads. According to her, this is due to three factors, namely psychological, material, and socio-cultural factors that are still patriarchal.
“Women should be facilitated or encouraged to enter politics, become regional heads for example so that the policies produced can be more gender, child, and pay attention to marginalized groups,” she said,
“If you look at it, many women who later run for or are elected as regional heads have a kinship with the previous regional head, such as wife, child or other blood relations with the aim of continuing the power of the previous regional head. This is very sad, but in reality it is so,” he continued.
It is known, DDI Global Leadership Forecast data for 2023 shows that organizations that ignore women in leadership for the sake of more pressing business interests are likely to lose more than they gain. In most cases, ignoring women in leadership statistics in their organizations will weaken their chances of success in the future.
Returning to Annisa’s view, according to her, women running to become regional leaders can at least be used as a new standard for political parties. One of them is that the meritocracy system must work, seeing whether or not a person’s track record is understood in leading an organization, or the area he leads.
As for what needs to be encouraged to overcome the lack of women’s representation in politics, according to Annisa, there are four things, namely:
1. Cadreization of political parties with a gender perspective. Parties do not have to provide political education to female cadres so that women are empowered and in campaigns are not sporadic.
2. Political education to the community with a gender perspective, normalizing women’s leadership.
3. Encourage affirmative action policies such as minimum 30% female candidates. for example, in the candidate pairs there are at least women who take a role, either as candidates for regional heads or candidates for deputy regional heads.
4. Encourage the reduction of the minimum limit of independent candidates from 6.5-10% to 3-6% as before so as to encourage the emergence of alternative independent candidates, it is not impossible that there are female candidates who then emerge.
This article has been published on Detiknews with the title “Perludem: Women Should Be Facilitated to Enter Politics”, https://news.detik.com/berita/d-7492173/perludem-perempuan-harus-difasilitasi-untuk-terjun-ke-politik.