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In 2014, Indonesia embarked on an ambitious agenda to devolve some authority for local development to village authorities through the Village Law, with budgets directly channelled to nearly 75,000 villages across the archipelago to implement local-level initiatives. The changes introduced under the Village Law provide a significant opportunity for women to increasingly influence village governance and development decisions so as to improve their wellbeing. Covering a range of sectors, places and contexts throughout Indonesia, this original peer-reviewed comparative research draws on multiple qualitative research methods and interviews with more than 600 people to explore if and how women’s collective action in different forms—both at the grassroots level and in more structured advocacy and support for village women from civil society organisations concerned with gender equity—has facilitated changes in the ways power is exercised and decision making operates in rural villages and districts to be more inclusive of women. These are types of change that can have profound impacts on the everyday lives of rural women in Indonesia. The research was conducted across a diverse range of regions from Sumatra, to Java, to Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and East and West Nusa Tenggara in nine provinces, 12 districts and 14 villages and the support of 15 civil society organisation partners in Indonesia focused on gender inclusion and women’s empowerment nationally and subnationally. The research has tended to capture in ethnographic detail and comparatively the voices and experiences of more vulnerable rural village women, women who have often experienced multiple-dimensions of poverty. The research shows how in different contexts and through different causal pathways, women have influenced structures of power and decision making, particularly those concerned with village development in Indonesia. The comparative analysis in this paper is also available in Bahasa Indonesia. |
