GAINING REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT

While women make up half of Indonesia’s population, since independence,the highest percentage of women representatives in the national parliament has only been 13 per cent, in the period 1987-1992.This book explains the strategies employed by Indonesian women activists to increase women’s parliamentary representation in the 2004 elections. As well as investigating the impact of the campaign at the national level, it also investigates the impact at the provincial and local levels through case studies of the East Java provincial parliament and Sidoarjo local parliament. How effective were their strategies in regard to the number of women elected to these three parliaments? Has the campaign for increasing women''s representation impacted on the possibility for women legislators to provide substantive representation? This is an important book for those who have interests in looking at representation of women in parliaments around the world, political scientists and students of politics in general.