INDONESIA: Women Ministry to Push More Women Participation in Politics

Ministry of Women Empowerment and Child Protection has highlighted the lack of women participation in politic in Indonesia, hence they will push the female contribution through several policies.

"One of which, we have pushed the issued of the Presidential Decree Number 9 Year 2000 about the Gender Mainstreaming in National Development," said Executive Secretary of Women Empowerment and Child Protection Ministry Mudjiati here on Saturday.

Mudjiati said on behalf Minister Linda Gumelar during the opening ceremony of National Assembly of Islam Women Student Association (Kohati) XXI in Jakarta, that the inequlity between women and men participation in politic has became major concern of the Women Empowerment and Child Protection Ministry (WECPM).

Based on the report of WECPM and Central Statistic Agency of the Gender Based Human Development research, the women participation in politic is just 18 percent comparing to the men participation which is 82 percent.

"Meanwhile, women who achieved first echelon position in the bureaucracy is under 10 percent," she said.

According to Mudjiati, the inequality in the politic sector was not only caused by the low participation of the women related with their education achievement, but also affected by the patriarch culture which is still dominant.

Since the gender understanding among the community has many perspectives both from women and men, it has caused the difficulties for the policy maker to provide fair and equal policy for all genders, she explained.

"Even some policy makers are not entirely understand about the essence of gender itself. If they don`t understand the basic, how do they will produce the fair policy?" she said.

To push more the women participation in politic, the government has put the Gender Mainstreaming program in the National Medium Term Development Plan (RPJMN) 2010-2014.

"The acceleration plan on the mainstreaming gender program is important to be well-defined to accommodate the challenge of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 2015," she said.