Research and Policy Brief

Significant efforts have been undertaken by Indonesian women, civil society organisations (CSOs), other mass organisations, as well as various government ministries and subnational offices to reduce inequalities, including gender disparities, through policies, poverty alleviation programs, community driven development approaches and community organising initiatives. While notable achievements in gender inclusion and increasing women’s influence have been made over the past two decades, improvements have been incremental and uneven, particularly rural areas.

Under Indonesia’s decentralised governance structures, the Village Law introduced in 2014 devolves substantial decision-making and budget authority to some 75,000 villages. The new 2014 Village Law explicitly emphasises participatory community decision making, poverty reduction and gender equity, creating a framework for continued efforts to improve gender inclusion.

The Women’s Collective Action and the Village Law study presented here aimed to:

• Investigate in depth, and at scale, the processes by which women have influenced the implementation of the Village Law and village development, with a particular focus on local (or grassroots) collective action by women,
• Understand how such influence varies across Indonesia,
• Identify what has constrained or enabled such influence, and
• Determine what has been the role for civil society organisations (CSOs) – as a structured, organised form of collective action that operates within but also beyond the village – in this process.

The study draws predominantly from mixed-methods qualitative research (backed up by some quantitative analysis) conducted in nine provinces, 12 districts, and 14 villages (see Figure 1). Each of the research areas has different livelihood options, geography and infrastructure, resource endowments, and population densities that shape policy, programs, and service design and delivery. These contexts also have differing politico-economic interests and dynamics, regulatory and policy environments, influential state and non-state actors, religious affiliations, social and customary norms, and dominant types of social networks.

Such features create enormous diversity in the subnational structures of authority, power and decision making across Indonesia that can form barriers to gender inclusion, narrowing the spaces for women to individually and collectively exercise voice, influence and agency. They can also however, create opportunities for change.

The study draws from mixed-methods qualitative research involving in-depth interviews (often repeated), life history interviews, and focus group discussions, involving more than 600 people, as well as observational data and informal conversations with many more women and community members. Data was collected through prolonged village stays and continued contact with participants over 2019. The study also draws from within case and comparative case analysis of CSO strategies, social networks, village and district contexts, and process tracing in the research sites (of women’s influence on the Village Law), and some quantitative analysis on scale using databases collating data on women’s groups and CSO activities in 27 provinces.^[i]

Fifteen CSOs and mass women’s organisations (herein collectively referred to as CSOs), that have been engaged in community organising and supporting women, collaborated in the research. These organisations were partners in the Australia-Indonesia Partnership for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (MAMPU)—which also supported the research—and contributed to research planning, fieldwork facilitation, and iterative analysis. Participating national organisations and consortium networks include PEKKA, Institut KAPAL Perempuan, ‘Aisyiyah, FPL, Migrant CARE, BaKTI, PERMAMPU, BITRA, and Yasanti. Subnational organisations include–YKPM, YABIKU, DAMAR Lampung, SPI Labuhan Batu, Perkumpulan Panca Karsa, and KPS2K.

^[i] 21 detailed life stories of women, and 12 extended process-tracing case studies of how women’s collective action has influenced the implementation of Indonesia’s Village Law, have been developed. For the women’s life stories (available in both English and Bahasa Indonesia) see Setiawan, K.M.P., B.A. Beech Jones, R. Diprose, & A. Savirani, Women’s Journeys in Driving Change: Women’s Collective Action and Village Law Implementation in Indonesia [Perjalanan Perempuan dalam Menggerakkan Perubahan: Aksi Kolektif Perempuan dan Pelaksanaan Undang-undang Desa di Indonesia], with and overview by K.M.P. Setiawan, B.A. Beech Jones, R. Diprose and A. Savirani, 2020. For the 12 process-tracing case studies (available in full in Bahasa Indonesia, with abstracts and an overview by R. Diprose , A.S. Hartoto, A. Savirani & K.M.P. Setiawan, 2020 available in both English and Bahasa) see Savirani, A., R. Diprose, R., A.S. Hartoto, & K.M.P. Setiawan, [Eds]. 2020. Membuka Jalan untuk Pembangunan Inklusif Gender di Daerah Perdesaan Indonesia: Bunga Rampai Kajian Aksi Kolektif Perempuan dan Pengaruhnya pada Pelaksanaan Undang-Undang Desa [Forging Pathways for Gender-inclusive Development in Rural Indonesia: Case Studies of Women’s Collective Action and Influence on Village Law Implementation]. The University of Melbourne, Universitas Gadjah Mada and MAMPU. Available at: www.mampu.or.id. and demisetara.org.

To help fill this gap, this research uses a method of positive deviance for site selection by including sites in different regions across Indonesia where women’s influence on Village Law implementation might have occurred to identify and analyse the mechanisms underpinning such influence. The research includes sites where CSOs were and were not operating to support village women. The research sites were selected to explore how village women might have influence on the implementation of the Village Law in rural Indonesia (via what pathways and mechanisms), if indeed they were able to do so, and to also establish if and how CSOs may have supported this process.

Working with and through grassroots groups: Given that the research draws from a sample of sites where MAMPU CSO Partners have sought to support village women (as well as ‘control’ sites where no such support has been provided to date), it is important to point out the common approach used by these Partner CSOS, that is, working with and through grassroots groups alongside broader advocacy to promote gender inclusion, with the goal of empowering women. This is a particular type of CSO intervention. Other CSOs may use a different approach and be less focused on the goal of gender inclusion and empowerment, which may have implications for women’s collective action that are not explored here.

Broader applicability: The findings are nonetheless helpful for all audiences (not just CSOs) in understanding how grassroots women’s collective action might be supported by group structures of different kinds that involve women, and how, or via what mechanisms, external actors might help bolster women’s influence in villages and beyond. That is, even if not working with CSOs as partners in initiatives to bolster women’s influence in governance, some of the features of the ways CSOs have supported women in the research sites to facilitate their agency certainly constitute important learning for other settings, actors and agencies concerned with gender-inclusive governance, structures of power, and socio-economic development.

This study captures the experiences of some of Indonesia’s most vulnerable women: It is important to note that in their work, many of these organisations have endeavoured to access and support some of the most vulnerable women in Indonesia, who are often the poorest of the poor in villages that themselves tend to have high aggregate levels of poverty. This includes:

• Female-headed families,
• Victims and survivors of domestic and other forms of gender-based violence,
• Homeworkers, often with below-subsistence incomes,
• Women with limited livelihoods options seeking to overcome poverty through migrant work, who are vulnerable to exploitation by ‘middle-men’ that may use illicit channels to facilitate such work, and, among others,
• Those with little knowledge of issues such as reproductive health and nutrition or how to even access available social protection and poverty reduction assistance programs.

Many of the women in the study have experienced these multiple-dimensions of poverty or vulnerability all at once. These are the women that often fall through the cracks of poverty alleviation and social protection programs. They tend to have lower formal education levels, and may be significantly socio-economically, politically or even geographically isolated.

As such, in conducting research in many sites where research partner organisations have conducted activities (as well as sites where there are no CSOs present), this research has sought to capture in ethnographic detail the voices and experiences of some of the most vulnerable rural women in Indonesia. The research has focused on how these and other women take action to influence development decision making and wider structures of power, but also on the ways they build networks of influence with other actors and often then, together, collectively advocate for gender inclusive policies and practice. The study also captures the experiences of other women in the research sites who may still experience significant challenges but do not (or no longer) have the same heightened degree of vulnerability.

Multiple pathways: The study identifies the multiple pathways of action that rural women take in the research sites to exercise voice and agency, which has often, at least initially, been bolstered by CSO support for these village women, with each organisation having different approaches. While such support has been especially important in helping grow the agency and networks of more vulnerable women compared with those men and women more accustomed to exercising voice and influence, there may also be other pathways.

The findings are nonetheless more applicable for wider sets of actors, programs and organisations beyond CSOs, seeking to build trust with and provide support for rural village women and gender inclusive development and policy making.

We conceptualise women’s collective action in this study as actions undertaken by collectivities, groups and networks, predominantly made up of women although often too with others, that seek to create positive changes in women’s lives. We distinguish between when these actions seek to create positive changes for women in their everyday lives in general, and when this relates specifically to creating such changes via influence on governance processes and structures of power, which is important for understanding women’s influence on Village Law implementation. The research analyses two forms of collective action:

1. Village women’s grassroots collective action, and

2. Structured, organised forms of support for village women, including village-level initiatives and broader, organised CSO advocacy and action.

To understand women’s collective action in different contexts—particularly the experiences of more vulnerable women—the analysis examines:

• The interaction between district and village socio-

cultural, politico-economic, and institutional (policies, regulations, programs) settings and the ways such interactions constrain or advance gender-inclusive decision-making processes and structures of power—including how influential leaders shape these settings and variations across time and space (District and village contexts).

• The ways village women – individually and through new and existing collectivities (including informal spaces and organised groups and networks) – take action to exercise voice and influence in village and broader decision-making and structures of power (Pathways: Village women’s experiences, and patterns in types and intensity of women’s grassroots collective action).

• If and how village women’s agency and collective action is supported by CSOs in different ways, each with different internal structures and forms of support (Pathways: CSO structures and support for women’s grassroots groups and agency).

• The ways CSOs use planned and adaptive strategies to support women to navigate district and village context constraints (Pathways: Strategies).

Contexts interact with and shape the pathways for women to influence village development and wider gender-inclusiveness in Indonesian society. A range of factors constrain and create opportunities for women’s influence in rural Indonesia:

• Different budget priorities and institutional rules (policies and regulations)—more gender inclusive regulations and guidelines are important for incentivising actors resistant to gender inclusiveness.

• The political economy in districts and villages—power is both visible and hidden in different contexts; the way power is structured and exercised can promote or restrict gender inclusiveness. Some regions display a high degree of plurality in terms of the scale and diversity of the political and social institutions, organisations, groups and leadership that have socio-political influence. Others are narrower – there are fewer influential actors, organisations and institutions, and more closely aligned interests which may or may not be committed to women’s inclusion in decision making and wider gender equality.

• Existing political will of government and social leaders to support empowerment agendas—leaders can speed up and

limit gender inclusiveness through public discourse, program priorities, and policy design.

• The degree of alignment between politically-determined development policy priorities and key concerns, gaps and needs identified by women and CSOs—the wider the gap, the more difficult it is for women to have influence and for their voices to be heard, but this can change over time.

• The types and nature of networks between actors—building stronger, deeper networks between village women and authoritative and influential village, district (and provincial/national) leaders supportive of women’s empowerment creates a greater likelihood for networked collective action to result in gender-inclusive institutions, programs, and ultimately structures of power and decision-making.

• Informal socio-cultural norms—socio-cultural gender norms are a significant and often hidden barrier for women to exercise voice and influence, particularly in public life and development decision-making. Changing such norms can and does happen through women’s networked collective action, but change is slower and more incremental, often lagging behind policy and program changes

Districts in some cases constitute a more conducive environment for gender inclusiveness, but this does not always correspond with village dynamics. Likewise, villages can be innovative even in light of district institutional and political environments that by design or default are restrictive for women’s empowerment. Both realms, tend to interact to produce differential conditions for women’s collective action and influence.

Context dynamics affect the everyday challenges women face and the extent they can individually or collectively exercise influence in public and often private realms. They also shape the forms of women’s grassroots collective action, the nature and scope of on-the-ground initiatives to support these women, and the different CSO approaches to support village women to navigate contexts and more broadly to advocate for policy change. This has implications for if and how women can influence village governance, so as to contribute to their efforts to improve their wellbeing.  

The analysis presents four broad categories of contexts, which are more or less conducive to women’s influence and gender inclusiveness and reflect both interacting district-village dynamics as well as indicators of ‘difficulty’ for introducing or strengthening gender inclusion (see Figure 3). Based on onset conditions before CSOs—with the support of MAMPU—sought to support village women through empowerment initiatives, many research sites displayed highly to moderately difficult context features.

Highly difficult contexts for broader women’s influence in village and district governance, and more explicitly on the implementation of the Village Law, are those in which there are weak, if any policies, regulations and programs that encourage women’s participation, and little political willingness among state and social leaders to support such an agenda at both district and village levels. They also display strong social norms that limit women’s influence in public life and cultural taboos on discussing issues affecting women—e.g. gender-based violence and reproductive health. Power tends to be concentrated among a small set of authority figures (both state and social leaders) who may be resistant to empowerment agendas, particularly those that are perceived to challenge status quo authority structures.

There tend to be few groups in which women can comfortably and collectively act, or if these groups exist, membership diversity is limited.

Figure 3: Context Variation in Women’s Influence

Highly conducive contexts, display a greater degree of plurality of social and political authority figures at both district and village levels and indicators of policy and leadership support for empowerment, including progress towards institutional change. There often is a stronger representation of women in decision-making positions (particularly at the district level), and stronger, more diverse groups and forums for women’s collective action and decision making. There also tends to be less resistance to gender inclusiveness, particularly when priority issues for village women and CSO advocacy agendas are aligned with political priorities.  

Moderately difficult contexts display many of the features of highly difficult contexts, but there are indicators of changes occurring (or opportunities for change) at either district or village levels.

Moderately conducive contexts have embarked on a path of supporting gender inclusion at either district or village levels, usually supported by a high degree of political willingness, but may not have fully developed supporting institutional arrangements or the issues being tackled traverse more sensitive social norms. 

For women in rural areas who are deeply embedded in the social networks that shape village life, and for more vulnerable women, collective action is unlikely to involve ‘collective protest on the streets’ to often unknown authorities with significant power. Rather, it involves exercising voice and agency often through informal processes involving more informal forms of influence through connecting to influential social and political figures, groups and organisations, in which women and these actors then together influence structures of power and decision making. Analysis finds the forms of women’s collective action in rural Indonesia are of different types situated on what is more or less a continuum (with some overlap between types) of more informal forms of influence through these interpersonal networks developed with authoritative government and social leaders, to participating in formal processes of decision making in organisations, institutions, and forums (see Figure 4 below).

Connecting more vulnerable women into the structures of power and decision-making has tended to involve establishing networks and the interrelated dimensions of slowly and incrementally building confidence, skills, capacities and knowledge for exercising voice and influence. Much of the action then takes place through these networks and involves a broader set of actors collectively advocating for change.

Many of the forms of collective action identified in the research were interrelated, sometimes sequential, sometimes overlapping and often mutually strengthening in the processes and trajectories of change mapped in villages, especially those that led to women having greater influence on the structures of power and decision making.

The intensity and forms of village women’s collective action, bolstered by the support of CSOs, vary across highly difficult and conducive contexts. In Figure 4, darker colours indicate the intensity of each form of women’s collective action observed in the research sites.

In highly difficult contexts most forms of collective action were informal and involved interpersonal networks developed and strengthened over time between village women and other influential government and non-government ‘champions’ of gender inclusiveness. Through these networks, women sought to build trust with and persuade sometimes resistant village decision makers of the benefits of inclusive village development. One exception was village women and CSOs working together with village governments to design and enact village regulations on issues important to women.

In moderately difficult contexts, forms of collective action were more varied across formal and informal types, and of greater intensity, given the signals of opportunities for change through joint action. Over time, more institutionalised forms of gender representation and collective action became increasingly prevalent through rules (policies and regulations), forums and programs, which evolved to be more gender inclusive, while informal action continued.

In more conducive contexts, formal, institutionalised forms of collective action were increasingly prevalent compared with other places, including women’s (collective) participation in village government planning and decision-making forums (such as MusDes and/ or Musrenbangdes), in similar district government decision-making forums, or by their involvement in formulating the content of new regulations, policies and programs. It also includes participating in elections as candidates and taking on other leadership. Informal forms of collective action were important in conducive contexts, particularly for vulnerable women, but women did not need to rely as extensively on networks to exercise influence.

Networked collective action

Across the research sites, particularly in the most difficult contexts (see Figure 4), the study observed a range of collective action processes driven by women’s efforts to establish relationships and networks of trust with authoritative actors that have influence over governance processes and social norms.

This study refers to these processes as women’s networked collective action. That is, the efforts of women and other actors to, collectively endeavour to influence governance, development, policy programs and structures of power to be more gender inclusive. Networked collective action involved women building or strengthening networks of trust with other women (through groups and informal spaces), and with other community members, especially authoritative actors often through engagement in everyday settings.

Figure 4: Patterns of Women’s Collective Action

It then involved village women leveraging their newly established or existing networks to garner support for their endeavours. This then created multiple sources of pressure on authoritative actors and ultimately decision-making forums and power structures, so as to influence outcomes. Such processes were also helpful for overcoming challenges, particularly resistance among authoritative and influential figures to  gender inclusiveness. Women’s informal spaces and more formal groups bolstered this process by extending networks, providing a new arena in which to build individual and collective agency through shared knowledge, skills and resources, providing mutual support and a source of protection, and fostering a sense of solidarity and collective agency.

The study establishes, that indeed, across the research sites throughout nine provinces, village women were able to grow their power and collective influence on the implementation of the Village Law and make significant contributions to village governance. For vulnerable rural

women, this was particularly the case when they were supported by CSOs using a variety of planned and adaptive strategies, and wider advocacy. However, with confidence and networks such action then took on a life of its own.

Examples of increased influence include new rules and policies (at both village and district levels) such as perdes (Village Regulations), perda/perbup (Regional Regulations/ District Head Regulations), and technical guidelines prioritising women’s needs and sensitivity to gender inequities. In some places, special women’s development planning meetings at village/district levels (Musrenbangdes/ Musrenbangda) were held or women were encouraged to attend village/district decision-making forums. Examples of increased influence also include Village Fund (Dana Desa) and sometimes district/provincial allocations for programs benefiting women, and some influence on gendered social norms in villages (albeit slowly) through initiatives implemented with the support of the village. Such influence was less evident in control sites, and overall change tended to be slower and incremental in the most difficult contexts (Figure 5 above). It was also evident that in places where women had influence on Village Law implementation (albeit to varied degrees), there was significant diversity in the range of initiatives that women introduced, which included but went beyond infrastructure and economic development. This ranged from new projects to establish clean water, sanitation, and solar-powered electricity facilities, to creating village-funded service posts that serve as a safe space for women to report and receive assistance in cases of gender-based violence, as well as safehouses for these women and their children. Women also gained village support

and funding for nutritional gardens, reproductive health services, village ambulance services, Early Childhood Education facilities, integrated health post facilities, women’s care posts, paralegal services, as well as support for informal sector workers’ groups, citizen documentation and religious marriage certification.

In multiple villages, women also successfully proposed village-owned enterprises (BUMDes) to help diversify livelihoods options for women (and the wider community). In one region a one-stop service provision centre was established to help migrant workers access and follow legal administrative processes to work overseas, and to train returned migrant workers and their families on how to utilise remittances for sustained livelihoods.

Overall, the diversified village development outcomes identified in the study that resulted from women’s influence on Village Law implementation included village economic and social policies and projects, as well support for training, skills development and information dissemination, service delivery and other initiatives. To institute these initiatives, in many cases women also initiated and led new multi-stakeholder forums, task forces, and other mechanisms to tackle particular issues, and garnered the support of other stakeholders to participate in these forums.

Women’s essential capacity and readiness for acting individually and collectively form the basis for fostering women’s voice, influence and empowerment. In turn, this may bring about longer-term changes in women’s own welfare in terms of women’s access to public services and programs that improve their livelihoods, and the participation of women in governance processes and their influence over wider social and political power structures.

What is clear from the analysis is that supporting (or strengthening) the creation of safe, informal spaces and more formal, resourced, inclusive and organised groups for women, helped strengthen and grow women’s social capital and their individual and collective agency over time. Given many long-standing practices of exclusion, particularly in the public sphere, participation in the types of groups examined in this study helped strengthen village women’s power within, that being their sense of self-worth and confidence, the power of women to act in public realms and their power with other women (and broader networks) to engage in collective action and exercise greater influence and (albeit not exclusive) power over structures of decision making and village development outcomes.

This occurred through multiple interacting and overlapping processes generated from group participation, such as:

• Strengthening and diversifying supporting networks and friendships with other women,
• Fostering a sense of solidarity and understanding of the issues many women face,
• Growing and sharing skills, access to resources, and knowledge,
• Strengthening organisational and leadership skills and experience,
• Providing a safe space and a source of protection,
• Building confidence and mutual support to overcome barriers and obstacles,
• Developing women’s collective strength to have wider influence, and, among others,
• Providing an organised and recognised platform for: driving women’s collective action of multiple forms, and for connecting to and collaborating with other actors and groups in villages and beyond to participate in women’s wider networked collective action.

CSOs trusted by village women helped facilitate such groups and spaces, and provided additional support for more vulnerable women to navigate barriers to their inclusion in development decision-making. Most often, the CSOs in this study supported village women to establish new women’s groups, although in some cases, particularly in difficult contexts, CSOs supported existing women’s groups, working with them to broaden the group agenda and diversity of membership. In a number of cases, CSOs supported village women to establish mixed gender multi-stakeholder groups to support village development, but for women these were best accompanied by other formal and informal women’s spaces in which they felt safe. Without such spaces

and support, particularly in the most difficult contexts and for the most vulnerable and marginalised women, the barriers to inclusion were so great that it was difficult for village women to embark on a journey of trying to ‘suddenly’ influence power dynamics, particularly in the face of both hidden and more explicit long-standing practices of exclusion. CSOs became one among the constellation of supporting actors in women’s networked collective action.

Drawing on ethnographic detail, analysis illustrates how many women throughout the research sites described journeys of surprise and bewilderment as their gender awareness grew, and then often confusion when they encountered fierce resistance from friends and family with whom they shared their experiences. They explained the fear, stigma and threats they experienced both within households and in community settings as they sought to get more involved in village development and public life. They often faced resistance from village authority figures with the power to exclude women from ‘everyday’ social, economic and other networks and opportunities on which they rely to meet basic needs, often in situations of extreme impoverishment.

Yet, women’s journeys were filled with accounts of perseverance, bravery and taking risks in promoting change and driving collective action, bolstered by group support.  They encountered setbacks over time, which many were able to overcome—sometimes alone, sometimes with CSO support—indicating that village women’s efforts to improve gender inclusion require time and continued support as journeys are not always positively and upwardly linear.

Women also described the personal benefits—social, economic, skills, networks, knowledge, support—of joining women’s groups for the first time and how this helped them forge new pathways. Across the 27 provinces where MAMPU CSO Partners have worked, by June 2020, nearly 3500 groups were established with MAMPU program support, involving some 73,000 women and 3000 men.

The study also found there were cohort experiences of those village women who emerged as key leaders and mobilisers in driving women’s collective action, especially early on. Some had prior life experience in organising (as members of groups, including state-corporatist women’s groups), or experience in public-facing roles through their income-generation activities or education, and/or learned to leverage social or family networks for support. These women were better equipped to take on leadership roles to mobilise and drive collective action when the opportunity arose, although were not always aware nor confident that they had such potential—some had not dreamed they could take on such leadership roles.

Yet, such a background was not essential: others, particularly those from more vulnerable groups, were also able to lead action with encouragement and group support. Understanding these cohort experiences among leaders is helpful for determining who might emerge as agents of change during new initiatives to support village women, particularly early on, but also over time.

CSOs have different organisational structures, networks, and length of establishment, work at different scales, focus on different issues, and work in different regions (with varied context difficulties for promoting gender inclusion). Many CSOs and mass women’s organisations examined in this study consisted of either national (or large regional) networks of organisations (some network member organisations also have their own partner organisations), national-subnational organisational partnerships supporting women in particular regions, or organisations connecting to communities with branch structures, with growing scale over time. They also connect to communities through different combinations of staff, paid and unpaid community organisers, village cadres, which can change over time.  These dimensions have implications for:

• Choices on targets, resourcing decisions and the nature and depth of impacts at different scales.

• How CSOs collaborate with development partners on new initiatives and that external support for CSOs is not amenable to a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach.

Analysis found CSO planning choices were made to have the greatest impacts within the bounds of their organisational structures/networks and were often dependent on human/financial resource availability, their sectoral focus and whether this might traverse cultural taboos. In addition, the degree to which CSOs already had established district or village-level relationships, context dynamics, and the nature of the activity at hand also had implications for their choices and approach to establishing, extending or strengthening their connections to and support for women at the grassroots. Some CSO organisational structures and approaches were comprised of a number of the following features, with each having advantages and trade-offs: Network consortiums have wide reach and can operate at scale (some consortium member organisations also have their own partnerships with other organisations), but often lacksufficient resources at the national level for monitoring and providing support for these partners that also vary

in their approaches, levels of experience, and length of establishment.

• National organisations with sub-national partnerships tend to have reach in particular regions and support specific partners over time in localities, and depending on national resource availability, work at small or medium scales on resource-specific timeframes.

• National organisations with branch structures are able to establish long-term support to women in localities, but this involves time and significant resources to establish and build support.

• Those working with cadre structures (in some cases national, in others local organisations) are often able to build local trust and work quickly in new villages (often fewer in number but more intensively), but support to cadres is resource intensive for staff and village cadres can also be unwittingly affected by village politics—new leaders can sideline cadres associated with rivals.

• Those with community organising structures in which CSO staff/field officers live in or nearby villages can provide deep support to village women—and to cadres where applicable—in difficult contexts to navigate hidden and visible barriers to inclusion, but work intensively in fewer regions with the resources available. 

• Most CSOs working in difficult contexts need to supplement village government capacity and village service gaps—leaders may be willing to engage with initiatives to bolster inclusion but do not know how to go about it nor how to design village regulations or appropriately allocate funding to support women’s self-identified priorities.

• ‘Do it for them’ approaches sped up progress in the short-term. ‘Do it with them’ approaches took longer, but knowledge was shared and skills transferred to both village women and authority figures, having implications for longer-term sustainability when CSO support receded.

Analysis highlights that CSOs have also supported village women by using strategic and adaptive approaches to undertake advocacy, and to help village women navigate context constraints. For example, supporting women in participatory data collection on village women and their self-identified needs, as well as social network mapping, is helpful for both village women and for CSOs themselves to identify, build connections with and leverage the support of ‘champions’ to lobby others with significant power in villages and districts. Such data

collection is also an important step for CSOs in accessing new villages.

Other approaches and strategies were also used by CSOs to help facilitate village women to garner the support of what commonly might constitute resistant authorities to gender inclusiveness and empowerment agendas. Learning from the experiences of village women and CSOs across the study, in the most difficult contexts, successful support for village women to influence village development entailed (Figure 6).

Under democratisation and decentralisation, significant efforts have been made to grow democratic decision making and to include communities in processes to determine development priorities—the introduction of the Village Law is another step in this process. However, there are often hidden barriers to gender inclusion that are shaped by both social norms on gender roles and the way structures of authority and power are configured (and historically embedded). These then privilege actors from particular networks, families, and other groups who have long been involved in political and policy decision making or have exercised influence in economic or social realms.

Analysis found that important in the process of improving gender inclusiveness was introducing regulatory reforms (through village and district regulations, instructions and policies) and technical implementation guidance so as to institutionalise the inclusion of women in decision-making processes and fund allocations. Village and District Heads, subnational governments, and other leaders responded to regulations, ‘guidance’ and lists of priorities for spending from central ministries and districts.
Rules alone did not assure women’s influence. Yet, rules did create incentives over longer time frames for resistant leaders and decision-makers to involve women in decision-making and to prioritise funding allocations for women, particularly in the

absence of village-level facilitation to bolster community participation in planning. Women being supported to overcome hidden and explicit barriers to exercising power was also an important catalyst for outcomes. Many examples were evident of how policies determined at multiple levels, including by villages, bolstered inclusiveness. To note a few:

• Creating forums, such as village and district development planning forums (Musrenbangdes and Musrenbangda) designated for women, structuring mixed forums to have generous representation of women, and ensuring women’s voices are substantively taken into account (not just an administrative step),

• Ensuring women were specifically invited and welcomed (not nominally including one group representative in decision-making meetings).

• Earmarking minimum funds for initiatives that were self-determined priorities for and driven by women—including allocating specified funding in perdes/perda.

• Officially and formally recognising women’s groups in regulatory arrangements (e.g. perdes, perda, perbup) such as many different women’s unions (female-headed families unions, homeworkers unions, village women’s unions), and others such as mixed gender constituent groups, migrant worker support groups, and task forces.

Across the research sites in which CSOs of different types, structures and approaches sought to support village women and women undertook different forms of collective action, broader changes in gender inclusion were evident (See Figure 7). This was the case even in places more resistant to gender inclusion and empowerment agendas, especially when compared with control sites where no such support and minimal collective action existed.

Women’s collective action not only saw greater women’s influence over village development and budgets allocated to support activities proposed by women’s groups, but also the increasing institutionalisation of gender inclusive decision-making. That is, contexts became more conducive to women’s influence and participation in development decision making and public life over time. This not only resulted from the efforts of various types of women’s groups, but also resulted from village women and often CSOs working closely with government and other influential actors to develop gender inclusive regulatory frameworks, policies and processes. In most cases, in the intervention sites, even in places more resistant to gender inclusion and empowerment agendas, changes were evident in the regulatory frameworks in districts and villages, which have implications for some if not all dimensions of gender roles, rights, responsibilities and representation (or the 4Rs).

Analysis revealed that improving gender inclusiveness, particularly for the most vulnerable women, entailed the dual imperatives of undertaking both advocacy and concrete initiatives at village and district levels, which was also augmented by national level partnerships with government and mass organisations. Subnationally, in conducive contexts, changes were apparent (but not

necessarily embedded) after 3-4 years of support for village women, depending on the sectoral focus and scale of the endeavour. Larger scale initiatives, for example those focused on livelihoods or social protection for the poorest women, required longer for building support. Here, introducing regulatory reforms, program or service roll out, evaluation and fine-tuning of pilots and implementation at scale, took between 4-6 years.

In the most difficult contexts, particularly at the village level, even small-scale initiatives required longer and deeper investments (over 6-10 years). Sequenced village-level change in one or two aspects may be evident after 3-4 years of such investments but much longer time frames are needed for policy and institutional change to take effect and become embedded in contexts. This was particularly the case for focus issues that traverse cultural taboos, or cross-cutting initiatives that interact with or seek to deepen intractable power structures that exclude women.

Figure 7: Empowerment Effects: Influencing Context Constraints

Initiatives that traverse cultural taboos such as domestic violence and women’s reproductive health, require significant time frames and tailored strategies of support regardless of the context. Analysis clearly finds that efforts to change social norms and attitudes towards women is slower and incremental, particularly in places where social conventions are significantly different to the values espoused in empowerment agendas. This includes places where, over time, village decisions are made by the same sets of influential actors, women rarely occupy influential leadership positions, there are few norms that support gender-inclusive decision making in public forums, and social norms often confine women to domestic

roles or at best to both domestic and income-generating roles.

In the study villages, change tended to occur when a focus on social norms was accompanied by other broader development activities in villages. Embarking on an agenda of tackling social norms alone is likely be strongly resisted on entry into village environments when leaders are suspicious of such agendas. Small changes in targeted villages may be evident in 4-5 years with deep support, but for initiatives at scale, district-wide institutional change may take 5-10 years with the collective involvement of women’s groups, multiple CSOs, government champions and other organisations.

Women’s collective action and influence over governance and broader structures of social and political power can be bolstered or constrained by ruptures in the external politico-economic environment at critical junctures—their journeys are not always upwardly linear and progressive. Such ruptures can shut down or open up spaces to advance gender inclusion, and can also reverse some of the gains made.

Changes in village and district leadership during elections, or the overwhelming disruptions that occur with natural disasters, are just two examples. The study found that even when the tenets of gender inclusion begin to surface over the short term of a few years, it cannot be assumed that they are sufficiently strong to resist these ruptures. New leaders may seek to shut down women’s participation in decision-making forums or close off funding for initiatives that received prior support, particularly in less conducive contexts. Equally, following the earthquake disaster in Lombok and in the recent COVID-19 pandemic, in regions where prior community

organising initiatives to empower women had taken root, women in these villages were the first to move to respond to these disasters, taking on leadership positions and tailoring recovery efforts to community needs.

The findings from a selection of research regions presented in Figure 8 shows the diversity of progress over time. In some places at critical political moments village-level progress on gender-inclusiveness regressed while the district environment continued on the path to greater conduciveness. 

It is evident too in the analysis that changes in social norms tend to lag behind institutional changes (see Figure 8, Villages 1 and 10). Progress made to influence village and district contexts does not always move at the same speed or in the same direction (Figure 8, Villages 9 and 4) due to context dynamics, particularly at critical junctures, even if similar degrees of support and types of initiatives are provided in different regions.