Women’s Collective Action and the Village Law: How Women are Driving Change and Shaping Pathways for Gender-inclusive Development in Rural Indonesia.

Abstract

In 2014, Indonesia embarked on an ambitious agenda to devolve some authority for local development to village authorities through the Village Law, with budgets directly channelled to nearly 75,000 villages across the archipelago to implement local-level initiatives. The changes introduced under the Village Law provide a significant opportunity for women to increasingly influence village governance and development decisions so as to improve their wellbeing. Covering a range of sectors, places and contexts throughout Indonesia, this original peer-reviewed comparative research draws on multiple qualitative research methods and interviews with more than 600 people to explore if and how women’s ..