Globally, women’s representation still lags far behind men’s, even though gender equality has long been on the international agenda. Since the 1995 Beijing Declaration and the establishment of SDG Target 5.5, countries have been encouraged to increase women’s representation in decision-making bodies (Norris, 2004; UN Women, 2024). However, men still hold more than three times as many legislative and executive seats as women (UN Women, 2025b). The proportion of women in parliaments worldwide has only risen slightly to 27.2 percent, while in executive positions it has actually fallen to 22.9 percent (BGIPU, 2025; UN Women, 2025a). With this trend, gender equality in parliament is only expected to be achieved in the coming decades, and equality in the cabinet even later. This inequality shows that the normative commitment to equality is not yet fully reflected in the composition of political institutions.
The same trend can also be seen in Indonesia, where the representation of women at various levels of political office is still far from equal despite the implementation of affirmative action policies. Since the implementation of the 30 percent quota policy for women legislative candidates, women’s representation in the House of Representatives (DPR RI) has indeed increased in the five national elections since 2004, but only from 11.8 percent to 22.1 percent in 2024 (KPU, 2024). In the Prabowo Subianto – Gibran Rakabuming Raka cabinet, women only occupy 4 of 48 ministerial seats. In electoral institutions, women only occupy 2 of 7 seats on the General Election Commission (KPU RI) and 1 of 5 seats on the Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu RI). From the 545 regions that held simultaneous regional elections, only 45 women were elected as regional heads, or around 8.26 per cent of the total (Kompas, 2025). These figures reinforce the argument that opening up formal access through quotas and regulations alone is not enough to produce strong political representation for women (Kittilson, 2005).
This article argues that the weak women’s representation in Indonesia is not only related to institutional design but also to the public’s view of who is considered worthy of representation and leadership. Normatively, democracy presupposes that women and men have equal opportunities to participate in political institutions. However, research on public attitudes shows that citizens often distinguish between support for the right to participate and assessments of leadership capabilities; one may accept women as part of democratic necessity, but still consider men to be more capable leaders (Chan & Di, 2024; Goethals & Hoyt, 2016; Visser, 2011). In the Indonesian context, this pattern is evident among certain groups that tend to be less supportive of equal representation opportunities for women and less supportive of their leadership abilities—particularly among Muslim voters and married respondents.
Based on this framework, using nationally representative survey data from 38 provinces collected by Populi Centre in June 2023 (N = 1.200), this study uses binary logistic regression to explore how social identity factors influence public opinion. This analysis focuses on two attitude indicators: support for equal representation opportunities for women and the belief that women and men are equally capable of political leadership. By comparing these two indicators among social groups—primarily based on gender, religious identity, and marital status—this article shows that public perceptions, especially among Muslim voters and married respondents, contribute to limiting women’s opportunities for equal representation in Indonesian politics.
How the Public Views Women’s Representation and Leadership
The weakness of women’s representation is related to low public support for women’s representation and leadership. Support for representation refers to the extent to which the public recognises women’s right to be present in representative institutions and involved in policy-making (Celis & Childs, 2008). Meanwhile, support for leadership relates to the public’s belief that women are capable of holding authority and making important political decisions (Cella & Manzoni, 2023). Study show that women may already hold positions of power, but are still seen as complementary or merely ‘filling quotas’, rather than as key decision-makers (Cho et al., 2021). This difference marks the gap between symbolic support—simply accepting the presence of women—and substantive support that truly recognises them as leaders.
Public support for women’s leadership is more fragile than support for their presence in politics because the ideal leader is still imagined with masculine criteria. When asked to imagine a politician, many people imagine a figure with agentic characteristics—assertive, dominant, ambitious—while women continue to be associated with communal traits such as warmth, emotionality, and family orientation (Schneider & Bos, 2019). Agentic traits can essentially be possessed by anyone, but culturally they are more often associated with men, so that leadership is perceived as more ‘natural’ for men than for women (Schneider & Bos, 2019). This pattern is in line with Role Congruity Theory, which explains that prejudice arises when the role of a leader, which demands agency, conflicts with feminine norms that emphasise gentleness and obedience (Eagly & Karau, 2002). In politics, this tension helps explain why the public can accept the principle that women have the right to sit in representative institutions, but remain sceptical about women’s capabilities in decision-making (Eagly & Karau, 2002).
Public perceptions of women’s representation and leadership are influenced by intersecting social identities. Survey respondents were either male or female, Muslim or non-Muslim, married or unmarried, and belonged to a particular socio-economic class (Crenshaw, 1989). This combination of identities influenced how they interpreted the ideal roles of men and women, which then shaped their assessment of whether women deserved to be represented and to lead. Therefore, support or rejection of women in politics needs to be read as a combination of gender, religious affiliation, and position within the family. In Muslim-majority countries, religious identity often interacts with traditional gender norms, which can reduce support for women’s leadership even though political rights have been formally recognised (Inglehart & Norris, 2003).
In Indonesia, gender, religious, and family norms collectively limit women’s political space. The dominant religious interpretation still places men as the head of the family and the ‘natural’ leader in the public sphere, while women are idealised as homemakers and guardians of family morals (Perales & Bouma, 2019). This pattern gives rise to the expectation that it is natural for men to be politically ambitious, while women are considered good if they prioritise domestic roles, especially after marriage. When women show political ambition or appear as leaders, they are often considered to be deviating from their ideal role or disrupting household stability. This combination of gender-based expectations, religious interpretations, and family norms is an important context for understanding how the public views women’s representation and leadership in Indonesia.
Where Does the Public Draw the Line?
The survey’s main findings show that the root cause of women’s under-representation lies in limited support for their leadership, rather than recognition of their right to be present. Approximately 74 percent of respondents agreed that women and men have the right to equal opportunities to be represented in political institutions, but only about 27 percent believed that women and men are equally capable of political leadership. This difference of nearly 50 percentage points shows that equality is more easily accepted as a normative principle than as a real division of power. These findings suggest that women are relatively more accepted as part of the ‘face of democracy’ than as actors wielding full political authority.
Although support for women’s representation appears high, it is not distributed inclusively and is clearly divided along religious identities. When socio-demographic characteristics are taken into account, Muslim respondents are less likely to agree that women and men are entitled to equal representation opportunities than non-Muslim respondents. Conversely, differences based on gender, age, education, and place of residence are not as pronounced as differences based on religion. This pattern suggests that among Muslim respondents, the discourse of political equality negotiates with religious and cultural perspectives that continue to position women primarily in domestic roles, so that support for women’s representation often stops at recognition of rights without automatically translating into a push to strengthen their numbers and strategic positions in political institutions.
On the dimension of leadership, public attitudes are divided between groups that form a base of support and groups that express more reservations about women leaders. Women respondents more often stated that women and men are equally capable of leading than male respondents, so that women as citizens emerge as the main supporters of the legitimacy of women leaders. Respondents with secondary and higher education also accept women’s leadership more than those with lower education, indicating that exposure to formal education, democratic discourse, and equality issues contributes to shaping more egalitarian political attitudes. Together, women and educated groups form an important support base that can serve as social capital for strengthening women’s political leadership.
At the same time, religious identity and marital status are the main sources of objection to women’s leadership and hinder their progress towards truly holding political authority. Muslim respondents again showed lower levels of support for women’s leadership than non-Muslim respondents, and this difference was more pronounced than when representation opportunities were assessed. Respondents who are married tend to be less supportive of women’s leadership than those who are unmarried, while other factors such as age, place of residence, and level of expenditure did not show a significant influence. Being Muslim and married thus became the combination of identities that most often drew the brakes when women were positioned as holders of political authority, rather than simply as members of representative institutions.
When pieced together, these patterns of support and rejection show that the gap between representation and women’s leadership is shaped by the intersection of gender, religion, education, and marital status. On the one hand, women and educated groups provide a social base that is ready to accept women as political leaders. Conversely, religious and family norms that place men as heads of households and natural leaders in the public sphere make some respondents—particularly those who are Muslim and married—more likely to view women’s political ambitions as something distant from the ideal of a wife and mother who prioritises the household. In this context, women’s representation is recognised as part of the language of democracy, but their leadership remains strictly negotiated through the lens of gender and family roles.
Representation Without Legitimacy for Women’s Leadership
The data shows that affirmative action policies for women are constrained by social legitimacy that does not yet fully recognise women as political leaders. Quotas and electoral regulations do open up space for more women to sit in representative institutions, but support for their leadership remains divided along lines of gender, religion, education, and marital status. This pattern confirms that formal legality alone is not enough, because a new power is considered legitimate only when it is in line with beliefs and social values that are recognised as normal by society (Beetham, 1991). As long as dominant religious and family norms continue to place men as primary leaders and women as domestic caregivers, efforts to increase the number of women in political institutions will continue to face a ‘social ceiling’ that limits the extent to which the public is willing to share power with women.
The gap between women’s presence and leadership shows that Indonesian democracy still tends to stop at the level of symbolic representation. Women are indeed appearing more frequently on candidate lists and in parliamentary seats, but their capacity as top decision-makers continues to be negotiated through the lens of gender roles, religion, and marital status. In the context of representation, the issue is not only who sits in the seat, but whether they are recognised and given space to act as legitimate representatives and leaders (Pitkin, 1972). The implication is that strengthening women’s politics cannot stop at institutional design and quota numbers, but requires long-term work in the realm of religious discourse, educational practices, and family relations, so that women are no longer merely present as symbols of representation, but are fully trusted as holders of political authority equal to men.
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