Lilian Budianto, Jakarta – Women still have little chance of becoming legislators in the 2009 polls despite the new election law requiring that 30 percent of party candidates are female, a seminar here concluded.

It is likely that the law will only offer women from major parties the opportunity to enter the House of Representatives, while female candidates from smaller parties had almost no chance, said Ani Soetjipto, a political scientist from the University of Indonesia.

Under the law endorsed by the House earlier this year, every political party must ensure 30 percent of its legislative candidates and board members are women. Each party is also required to have one female legislator in every three candidates in the list it submits to the General Elections Commission (KPU).

Agun Gunandjar Sudarsa of the Golkar Party said this would prevent political parties from ranking their female candidates at the bottom of their list, which had occurred in previous elections.

Ani told the seminar Thursday that in small parties, which tend to only win one or two seats, women barely stood a chance because their House seats were likely to be given to the higher ranked male candidates. She also said the new 30 percent of the vote division number (BPP) approach could hinder women from becoming lawmakers.

The new law states that candidates who secure 30 percent of the necessary votes to win a seat at the House will automatically secure the seat, regardless of where they are ranked on the candidate list. Under the previous law, a candidate had to win 100 percent of the BPP before he or she was able to automatically secure a seat without having to wait by the list system. The BPP is calculated by dividing the number of voters by the number of seats available.

Ani said even though women could not be placed at the top of the list, they may lose out to their more politically-mature male counterparts who win 30 percent of the BPP.

Yuda Irlang of the Women's Voice Empowerment Movement (GPSP) said the new law would not mean much to women if they did not start building relationships amongst stakeholders early on.

"We do not merely aim to have more women at the House. We don't want to create what people may call an 'historic accident', in which women are forced to enter the House regardless of their experience and qualifications simply to abide by the law," she said.

Yuda, a member of Balcony Faction, a coalition of women's NGOs monitoring legislative policies at the House, said her side wanted the new law to offer more room for women on the political stage and to allow them to fight for more gender-orientated policies in the future.

In the long term, she added, the new law should encourage women to improve themselves, with more stakeholders involved in educating women politically, socially and economically.

Yuda said the government, political parties and non-profit organizations should start to strengthen relationships to familiarize both potential female candidates and voters about participating in practical politics.

State Minister for Women's Empowerment Meutia Hatta Swasono has repeatedly said more women at the House are necessary to ensure that lawmakers produce more women-oriented policies, such as mother's healthcare and gender equality at school in a "patriarchal society".