Pencitraan Diri Caleg Perempuan dalam Pemilu 2014

This paper aims to discuss the ways Indonesian political campaign in 2014 presents female candidates by reading and analyzing the semiotics in female representatives’ campaign poster. For the first time in Indonesian political history, Legislative Election 2014 obliged every political party has at least 30% of female candidates for each of its constituency. This affected the interaction between the voters and the female candidates, indicated by the raising number of posters and billboards on the street promoting the female candidates. These promotional media usually display the picture of the female candidates, their political parties, slogans, and visions-missions. Using Barthes’ Semiotics, this paper will analyze the elements of the posters and billboards, by focusing not only on the signs, but also on how those signs operate in social context. The study is focused on the way the female candidates present themselves in campaign posters, the way the voters decode the campaign posters and the way they relate their expectation to the ideal characteristics of the female candidates. The data collected reveal that female candidates present themselves in feminine ways as seen through their use of make-up, fashionable scraf and clothing, and also accessories to adorn themselves in accordance to the social convention on how a woman should present themselves in the public domain. Yet, the respondents who act as voters, prefer their female representatives to be firm, assertive, courageous, serious, and who are socially acknowledged as having a good performance in their previous positions. This gap happens because of the different expectations between the candidates and the voters about the qualities of ideal female representatives. The finding in this study might help female candidates and political parties to prepare strategies in the upcoming Legislative Election for a winning ticket.