The Pious and the Secular: the Faces of Indonesian Female Legislative Candidates in 2014 Indonesian Election

Djundjung, Jenny Mochtar (2016) The Pious and the Secular: the Faces of Indonesian Female Legislative Candidates in 2014 Indonesian Election. In: 11th Biennial Convention of the Pacific and Asian Communication, 21-07-2016 - 21-07-2016, Kuala Lumpur - Malaysia.

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Abstract

To increase the number of women represented in the House of Representative, the Indonesian government had issued Laws on elections and political parties consecutively for the 2004, 2009 and 2014 Elections. The affirmative policy required that a minimum of 30% quota be given to female candidates. For the 2014 Election, a political party that failed to meet the required 30% would be disqualified to compete in the related electoral constituency. True to expectation, the number of female candidates in the 2014 Election increased to 37% compared to the 30% in the 2009 Election. The increase in the numbers of the female candidates could be directly felt in the campaign weeks before the Election where photos of the candidates appeared in posters, banners, billboards all over the cities in Indonesia, not to mention the Internet. The swarm of tens of mostly foreign faces that would represent the people were really unsettling for the voters as they need to choose based on just the photos without having any information on the reputations and qualifications of these female candidates. This condition was made worse when some political parties decided to recruit female dangdut singers, female photo models for male magazines and female celebrities to fulfill the 30% quota, frivolous of their competence. As the voters would give their votes based on the photos of the female candidates, the candidates presented themselves in manners that they deemed would attract voters. In general, the images could be divided into two categories, the pious and the secular. Some of them emanated the image of piousness using religious symbols, some other posed in a sensual manners, others adopted motherly aura, successful professionals, assertive and firm leaders, or commanding individuals. Despite the images that they wanted to present, the question remained whether voters were able to decode these images. Based on a research funded by the Indonesian State Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education, this paper described on how the images of the female candidates were decoded by voters in Surabaya who has a female mayor.

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