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How Gender Socialisation is Improving Women’s Representation in Indonesia’s Foreign Affairs

22 Mar 2021
By Wendy A. Prajuli, Richa V. Yustikaningrum and Dayu Nirma Amurwanti
Ibu Nafsiah - a tireless campaigner on HIV issues in Indonesia and Secretary of Indonesia's National AIDS Commission, which is supported by Australia. Source: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade https://bit.ly/3rin8KU

Foreign affairs and diplomacy have historically been a male arena, and this still prevails today. In Indonesia, gender socialisation has played a part in the increasing number of female diplomats.

Women face more hurdles in pursuit of their career. They have had to work harder than their male counterparts, access to ambassadorial positions are limited, and, on occasion, they are victims of sexism, discrimination, and harassment. In countries such as Australia, the culture of misogyny in domestic politics forbids full feminist foreign policy from being developed and publicly declared. However, some scholars found that before the nineteenth century, women had ways to occasionally participate in diplomacy and foreign affairs.

Yet, the nature of modern diplomacy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has significantly changed. The shift to a more professional and bureaucratic Ministry of Foreign Affairs has inadvertently confined women’s participation to mostly informal activities, such as events related to the role of a diplomatic wife.

Diplomatic history is the field that has the most developed studies on women and diplomacy; however, it is concentrated on European and North American diplomacy history. In political studies, research is limited, with core analysis on global north countries such as the United States, Canada, Sweden, and Australia.

To enrich the study of women’s representation in foreign policy in the global south, it is important to consider the case of Indonesia. Indonesia is particularly interesting as the post-authoritarian era saw a spike in women’s participation in the field. Thus, it provides an interesting example of the impact of gender socialisation in post-authoritarianism on women’s representation in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Gender socialisation has significantly influenced women’s representation in its vital role of establishing women’s suitability as diplomats. It potentially encourages or discourages women from getting involved in foreign policy because it produces and reproduces rules, norms, and values improving or limiting women’s participation in foreign policymaking.

Gender socialisation may change over time. When it does, it will also transform views of foreign policy and gender roles within. When these shift from being predominately patriarchal, it will potentially encourage women to be involved in foreign policy because of the reiterative production of rules, norms, and values that promote women’s participation.

Indonesia ranks 85th out of 153 countries surveyed by the World Economic Forum in its 2020 Global Gender Gap Index. While the report commends Indonesia for its improvement in economic participation and opportunities, 54.3 percent of women are in the labour market but earning half of men’s income, despite narrowing gaps in health and education. Additionally, new research found that Indonesian democratisation has not helped the betterment of gender relations in Indonesia’s civil service.

In politics, the proportion of women in the legislature is less than the global average (at 17.4 percent), while that of female ministers has declined compared to the previous term (21 percent from previously 26 percent). Nevertheless, it ought to be noted that the ministers of the Environment and Forestry, Finance, Foreign Affairs, Manpower, Women Empowerment, and Children Protection ministries are all women. In addition, for the first time, Indonesia has a female Speaker and Chair of Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee in the legislature.

At the same time, Indonesia has the world’s largest share of women in senior and leadership roles and they also make up more than half of the country’s civil service in 2019. Indonesia fares better than other countries in promoting women to senior positions. While the global average remained at 25 percent in 2017, the proportion of women with senior roles in Indonesia is at 46 percent, second only to Russia, and therefore the highest among the Association of South East Asian (ASEAN) nations.

Indonesia also has policies in place promoting gender equality. A Presidential Instruction on Gender Mainstreaming, issued in 2009, calls for gender-responsive development planning, implementation, and monitoring. The 2020–2024 National Medium Term Development Plan has sections to ensure that gender-responsive planning and budgeting are applied. The Indonesian Statistics Bureau also segregates key indicators depicting gender gaps in health, education, income, and leadership positions.

Despite all the right policies and the ability to track progress, women’s economic and political participation still encounter challenges. For instance, stereotyping of women, and traditional views on their roles prevail. President Suharto’s thirty-two-year regime propagated women’s role as “Ibu” (mothers) through the creation of a women’s group called Family Welfare Support (Pembinaan Kesejahteraan Keluarga), which restricted women’s role to mothers and caregivers. Even with a regime change, Ibuism persists.

Although women’s participation in Indonesian politics has historically been accommodated, during Suharto’s rule in the mid-1960s, women’s political participation was circumscribed. Ibuism was Suharto’s ideology to domesticate women’s roles and activities.

This situation began to change in the mid-1990s when the government signed the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, paving the way for women to speak and criticise the government’s policies concerning women. Following democratisation in the late 1990s, women’s political participation improved significantly, as did the relevant discourse, which has affected society’s views on women’s public roles. Consequently, gender socialisation in Indonesia has changed. These dynamics, and the long history of women’s political participation, have made current Indonesian society more welcoming to more and better roles for women in politics, including in foreign policy.

Indonesia’s acceptance of women’s contributions to foreign policy has increased since then. This can be seen through five separate courses of action. First, since 2005, the number of women aspiring to join the diplomatic corps of Indonesia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs increased significantly, due to the increasing popularity of diplomatic careers. Next, the number of successful female applicants in the recruitment of Indonesian diplomats has increased. Third, female diplomats have also become more visible. Fourth, Retno Lestari Priansari Marsudi was the first female diplomat elected as the Minister for Foreign Affairs, which was publicly acclaimed. Finally, reforms have been undertaken to accommodate the 2009 Presidential Instruction on Gender Mainstreaming and in response to the gender-related changes of the past few years.

The positive perception of the role of women in foreign policymaking has encouraged and motivated women to join the diplomatic corps in greater numbers. Therefore, modern gender socialisation in Indonesia reinforces the notion that being a diplomat is a profession or social role that is applicable to both genders.

Wendy A. Prajuli is a lecturer at the Department of International Relations, Bina Nusantara University, Jakarta, Indonesia. His research interests are about foreign policy analysis and Indonesian foreign policy.

Richa V. Yustikaningrum is a lecturer at the Department of International Relations, Bina Nusantara University, Jakarta, Indonesia. Her research interests cover gender relations in international relations as well as in Indonesian society and politics.

Dayu Nirma Amurwanti is a lecturer at the Department of International Relations, Bina Nusantara University, Jakarta, Indonesia. Her research interests lie on environment, natural resources management, gender, and governance.

This is an extract of Prajuli, Yustikaningrum, and Amurwanti’s article in the Australian Journal of International Affairs titled, “How gender socialization is improving women’s representation in Indonesia’s Foreign affairs: breaking the ceiling.” It is republished with permission.