W

ith no strict provisions on female representation, legislation often overlooks the rights of women, according to expert witnesses at a judicial review of the 2012 Legislative Election Law at the Constitutional Court on Thursday.

Rocky Gerung, a philosophy lecturer at University of Indonesia, cited the plan by Lhokseumawe administration in Aceh to ban women from straddling motorcycles as an example of legislation that did not side with women.

According to the National Commission on Violence against Women, there were 282 new bylaws enacted in 2012 that discriminated against women. The figure rose from 207 in 2011, 189 in 2010 and 154 in 2009.

Rocky and former member of United Nations Committee of the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) Sjamsiah Achmad were presented as witnesses by the Women'€™s Coalition, which is requesting the Court to annul what it calls discriminatory provisions in the law.

Sjamsiah told the bench that policy makers did not understand that '€œequality between men and women does not mean that one controls the other, but to share the same responsible in maintaining the continuity of human life'€.

'€œWe still have to improve the understanding of policy makers in the House and in the executive branch, as well as the courts,'€ she said.

Sjamsiah drew the court'€™s attention to Article 4 Paragraph 1 of CEDAW which was ratified by Indonesia in 1984. '€œCEDAW aims to speed up the realization of substantive equality of women and men, and to correct things that do not support such equality, including policies, budgets, and programs,'€ she said.

Sjamsiah argued synergy between women and men was important and that the 30 percent quota stipulated in the law is actually one of the strategies to optimize it. She said she was concerned that the 2012 Law failed to specify sanctions or enforcement mechanisms to ensure compliance with the policy.

According to the United Nations Development Programme'€™s (UNDP) 2013 Human Development Report, Indonesia lags behind even Laos and Vietnam in terms of women'€™s presence in lawmaking bodies.

Based on the World Bank 2012 data, women constitute 50.1 percent of Indonesia'€™s total population of 244 million, but they occupy only 18.2 seats in the House of Representatives, much below even the quota of 30 percent set by the General Elections Commission in line with the 2012 Law.

Rocky said as long as there was no commitment, policy would still be biased. '€œIf there is no serious affirmative action, bylaws and policies will be formulated based on the perspective of men where women are regarded as objects,'€ he said.

The coalition argues the law does not side with women by not strictly requiring political parties to ensure that at least 30 percent of their executives are females.

They also say that a phrase '€œby considering'€ the representation of women if there are two or more legislative candidates who meet the requirements the most votes as stipulated in the Article 215 (b) was open to various interpretations and would only close women'€™s access to politics.

Representatives of the government and the House of Representatives told the court last week that the law did not sideline women and was devised to empower them politically.