WOMEN NEED TO WORK HARD TO MEET QUOTA IN PARLIAMENT

By Andi Abdussalam
Jakarta, March 19 (Antara) - Woman candidates still need to work hard to win more votes and to meet their quota accounting for 30 percent of the 560 seats in Parliament during the upcoming April 9 legislative elections.          The movement for gender equality has given birth to a law, which provides a quota of 30 percent of the parliamentary seats to women legislators. But, in the past three general elections organized since the reforms era, the quota of 30 percent seats for women has never been met.          Women were only able to secure 9 percent of the seats in the 1999 elections, 10 percent in 2004 and 18 percent in the 2009 legislative elections.          With these figures, gender equality still remains far from reality. After all, the number of women in Indonesia is larger than that of men. Based on the country's population census in 2000, women account for 51 percent of the population.          "In the current legislative election campaigns, women legislative candidates must take up strategic issues in the society to win voters' support. Woman legislative candidates must be able to take advantage of this momentum so that they can secure the 30 percent quota in the House of Representatives (DPR)," Political observer Junaidi Abdullah of Bangka Belitung's Pertiba High School of Law, pointed out.