Gendered Procedural Inclusion: Women’s Participation and Substantive Power in Village Policy-Making in South-Central Timor Regency, Indonesia

Abstract

Women’s participation in village policy-making is widely promoted as a core element of gender-responsive and participatory governance, yet formal access does not necessarily translate into agenda-setting, regulatory, or allocative influence. This study examines how that conversion occurs across village policy processes in South-Central Timor Regency, Indonesia. Drawing on a qualitative multi-village case study in Boti, Bijeli, Anin, and Oinlasi, the analysis uses 36 purposively selected informants, observation, and village policy and budget documents. The findings show that women are formally present through representative attendance, drafting teams, PKK and Posyandu networks, BPD membership in some villages, and monitoring forums, but their influence is uneven across policy stages. Women’s proposals are most consistently translated into health, nutrition, weaving, home-garden, and small-enterprise items; agenda-setting, regulatory initiation, and final budget allocation remain more male-dominated. Cross-village comparison shows that conversion from access to influence is stronger where women hold embedded institutional positions, receive organisational backing, participate repeatedly across policy stages, and connect proposals to recognised policy instruments. It weakens where participation is episodic, policy language is inaccessible, socially legitimate issue frames are narrow, and final authority is concentrated in male-led institutions. Building on invited-space, representation, agency, and feminist-institutionalist scholarship, the article develops gendered procedural inclusion as an integrative mechanism: formal access exists, but gendered filters attenuate the conversion of access into voice and policy authority. The concept therefore specifies how procedural inclusion can produce selective responsiveness without redistributing decision-making power.