advances—on domestic workers’ rights, care economy reforms, and transgender rights—at international forums, identifying these as promising entry points for feminist solidarity(KII, September 2025) . 3.3 Indonesia Indonesia—Southeast Asia’s largest democracy and an upper-middle-income country—occupies a strategic position in regional politics and diplomacy. As an influential member of ASEAN and an active mediator in regional peace and security processes, Indonesia plays a pivotal role in shaping the region’s governance and development agenda. Over the past two decades, Indonesia has witnessed gradual progress in women’s political representation and leadership, with an increasing number of women heading ministerial portfolios and participating in high-level diplomacy. However, entrenched patriarchal structures, cultural resistance to feminism, and gaps in legal protections reveal that the adoption of feminist principles remains uneven and contested. Former Minister Retno Marsudi’s appointment marked a historic first for Indonesia, with a woman leading one of the country’s most traditionally male-dominated ministries. Under her leadership, Indonesia made visible advances in women’s leadership in diplomacy and international affairs. At the 15th Organization of Islamic Cooperation(OIC) Summit in Gambia, Marsudi called for narrowing development gaps among member states, noting that 21 of the 46 least developed countries are OIC members. She linked inclusive development to women’s empowerment and access to quality education, offering scholarships for Afghan women and girls, sharing madrasa curriculum best practices with the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan(UNAMA), and delivering 10 million doses of the polio vaccine for Afghan children(Antara News, 2024). Marsudi emphasised in her first speech as a member of the UN Human Rights Council(2020–2022) that“investing in women means investing in human rights,” a statement that encapsulates her consistent message that women’s empowerment is central to Indonesia’s human rights diplomacy. Marsudi’s tenure also contributed to a rise in female diplomats—from below 10 per cent under previous governments to around 13 per cent today(Chehab, 2023)—a modest but symbolically significant achievement. However, experts cautioned that gender mainstreaming within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs still“has a long way to go”, and expressed concern that these gains may not be sustained under the current male-led administration(KII, October 2025). Indonesia has also sought to institutionalise women’s leadership in regional peacebuilding. It hosted the ASEAN Institute for Peace and Reconciliation(ASEAN-IPR) Women in Peace Processes Symposium in Jakarta in May 2025, bringing together women peacebuilders from across ASEAN and launching a digital catalogue of the ASEAN Women for Peace Registry to enhance women’s leadership and advocacy in regional peacebuilding(ASEAN-IPR, 2025). These efforts reflect Indonesia’s attempt to position itself as a moral and inclusive Muslim democracy, integrating gender equality into both South-South Cooperation(SSC) and Islamic diplomacy. Domestically, Indonesia’s gender mainstreaming strategy, first introduced in 2000, has provided a long-standing policy framework, but implementation remains uneven. Not all ministries have adopted gender mainstreaming, and coordination challenges persist, particularly because the Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection lacks provincial branches and thus struggles to influence subnational governance. Still, Indonesia has made measurable progress through initiatives such as Gender­Responsive Budgeting(GRB) within its national budget (APBN) since 2000, aiming to integrate gender into planning, budgeting, monitoring, and expenditure tracking. GRB efforts are now expanding to subnational governments through initiatives like SKALA, which supports local administrations in adopting gender-based budget tagging (Antara News, 2021; SKALA 2024). According to SKALA’s six-monthly progress report(July–December 2024), the programme has delivered critical improvements in the visibility and accountability of gender-responsive budgeting. It supported the development of Indonesia’s first gender budget-tagging model, assisted the Ministry of Finance in revising its budget classification system to better capture gender, disability, and ageing dimensions, and facilitated capacity-building training for provincial actors across several regions. The improved tagging model is expected to be embedded in a new Ministry of Finance regulation aligning national and subnational budget categories. Together, these changes lay the structural foundations for better tracking of gender-sensitive expenditures and stronger governance of public financial flows(SKALA, 2024). Indonesia has launched several frameworks to advance women’s economic participation and digital inclusion, including the National Strategy for Women’s Financial Inclusion(SNKI-P), Guidelines for Women’s Digital Transformation and Entrepreneurship, and Women-Friendly and Child-Caring Villages(DRPPA). Collaboration between the Ministry of Indonesian Migrant Workers Protection and partners such as the ILO and EU has improved gender­responsive recruitment and inspection systems, especially benefiting women in domestic, manufacturing, and care sectors(ILO, 2025). ​I​ndonesia’s leadership in advancing the WPS agenda has also been notable. It became the first Southeast Asian country to adopt a National Action Plan on WPS in 2014, embedding gender equality and inclusive peacebuilding into national frameworks(ASEAN, 2023). These commitments were reaffirmed in 2023, when Indonesia’s Minister of Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection chaired the ASEAN Women, Peace and Security Summit, solidifying Indonesia’s reputation as a reference point for WPS integration. This leadership has translated into measurable progress both domestically and internationally. CH 3: Case Studies 37