More than two decades have passed since the end of New Order authoritarianism, yet women’s representation in politics has not shown significant improvement. The women’s movement, which strengthened after the 1998 Reformasi, has sought to achieve the agenda of securing a minimum of 30 percent women’s representation in political institutions in Indonesia. This paper seeks to answer why the women’s movement has not yet achieved this agenda. By examining mobilization and movement strategies, we assess that mobilization within the women’s movement has tended to be reformative, characterized, among other things, by efforts to change specific aspects of the system. This approach becomes less effective particularly when democracy declines alongside the strengthening of oligarchic power. Through interviews with several actors involved in the movement and relevant secondary literature, our study also finds that such reformative movements must confront larger and more fundamental structures, which require new strategies within the movement.
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