Women in Indonesia’s New RAN PE: Gender Mainstreaming, State Ibuism, and the Limits of Inclusion
Indonesia’s RAN PE 2026-2029 marks an important shift in national preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) policy by formally incorporating gender mainstreaming and dedicated provisions on women, youth and children. Drawing on Julia Suryakusuma’s concept of State Ibuism, this article argues that the new framework advances gender inclusion while still locating women largely within the roles of family resilience, caregiving, peace agency and community mediation. This reflects a gender essentialist approach, meaning an assumption that women possess fixed, natural or inherently peaceful and nurturing qualities because of their gender. Such framing is not only a normative limitation but also a security concern. It can distort threat assessments, weaken rehabilitation and reintegration, and underuse women-led civil society as strategic P/CVE partners.
Introduction
Indonesia’s Rencana Aksi Nasional Pencegahan dan Penanggulangan Ekstremisme Berbasis Kekerasan yang Mengarah pada Terorisme (National Action Plan for the Prevention and Countermeasures of Violent Extremism Leading to Terrorism, or RAN PE) has entered a new phase. Following the completion of the 2020-2024 cycle under Presidential Regulation No. 7 of 2021, the government issued Presidential Regulation No. 8 of 2026, establishing the RAN PE for 2026-2029. The new framework continues Indonesia’s efforts to move beyond a predominantly law enforcement-based counter terrorism model towards a broader prevention architecture that involves ministries, local governments, civil society, communities and international partners, building on two decades of counter terrorism policy development since the 2002 Bali bombings.[1]
The new RAN PE has also arrived at a moment when Indonesia’s terrorism threat appears reduced but not absent. The 2026-2029 RAN PE notes that Indonesia recorded “zero terrorist attacks” in the past two years, while also reporting more than 1,000 arrests of suspected terrorists between 2020 and 2024.[2] This suggests that extremist activity remains a continuing security concern, even as public attacks have declined. Against this backdrop, the evolution of Indonesia’s policies for prevention, rehabilitation, reintegration and community resilience remains highly consequential.
The 2026-2029 RAN PE is organised around nine themes: 1) national preparedness; 2) community and family resilience; 3) education, skills, development and employment facilitation; 4) protection and empowerment of women, youth and children; 5) strategic communication, media and electronic systems; 6) deradicalisation; 7) human rights, good governance and justice; 8) witness protection and victims’ rights; and 9) partnerships and international cooperation.[3] These themes show that the new RAN PE is not limited to security enforcement but adopts a broader prevention agenda that links violent extremism to community resilience, education, employment, protection, human rights, digital communication, rehabilitation and multi-stakeholder cooperation.
This broader structure creates more entry points for gender mainstreaming. Article 3 lists gender mainstreaming (pengarusutamaan gender) as one of the principles of implementation, while the annex defines it as ensuring that all preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) actions are equally responsive to the experiences, needs and contributions of women and men. The plan also introduces a dedicated theme focused on the protection and empowerment of women, youth and children.[4] In addition, the RAN PE relies on local implementation through Rencana Aksi Daerah (Regional Action Plan, or RAD PE), meaning that provincial, district and city governments are expected to translate national priorities into local programmes. This localisation emphasis matters because vulnerability to extremist mobilisation, religious authority, civil society capacity and socioeconomic conditions vary across Indonesia.
This article critically reviews the 2026-2029 RAN PE through the lens of Julia Suyakusuma’s concept of State Ibuism.[5] It argues that although the new plan marks meaningful progress in institutionalising gender within Indonesia’s P/CVE policy, many of its gendered provisions continue to place women in restricted roles tied to domestic and moral responsibilities. The article first explains the concept of State Ibuism, before providing a brief overview of gender inclusion in Indonesian counter terrorism policy. It then examines four key themes within the new RAN PE, highlighting the gendered security implications of each. Finally, the article argues that gender essentialist assumptions can distort threat assessment, weaken rehabilitation, reintegration and prevention, and diminish the strategic value of women-led civil society in P/CVE.
State Ibuism and Gendered P/CVE
Suryakusuma’s concept of State Ibuism describes a state-sponsored gender ideology that defines women’s civic and political value primarily through their roles as wives, mothers and moral guardians. Most closely associated with Indonesia’s New Order period under President Suharto (1966-1998),[6] State Ibuism positioned women as central to national development and social order, linking that centrality to domestic responsibility, support for male authority and moral discipline.[7]
This concept remains useful beyond its original historical context for highlighting how contemporary gender inclusion policies can reproduce gender constraints. Even when State Ibuism does not appear as an explicit doctrine, its influence is visible through taken-for-granted assumptions that women are naturally suited to care, educate, nurture, mediate, protect and stabilise families and communities. In P/CVE, women are recognised as important actors, but often through roles tied to family resilience, community harmony and social order. These roles can limit women’s political agency by making their public participation contingent on serving family, community or state stability.
In P/CVE policy, this logic produces a specific form of gender inclusion. Women are recognised as important, often because they are seen as close to children, households, schools, religious communities and local moral life. They become early warning actors, family resilience builders, peace agents and community mediators. These roles can be genuinely important for prevention. However, they can also instrumentalise women, placing responsibility on them to detect radicalisation and maintain social order without necessarily giving them an adequate voice in policy design, budgets, evaluation or institutional leadership.
Therefore, the issue is not women’s involvement in peacebuilding or community mediation per se, but the narrow terms on which that involvement is recognised. A framework that values women mainly as mothers, caregivers or moral stabilisers may include women rhetorically while still limiting how far their expertise, leadership and political agency are taken seriously in P/CVE practice.
From Gender-Neutral Counter Terrorism to Gender Mainstreaming
Indonesia’s move towards gender mainstreaming in counter terrorism is relatively recent. Komnas Perempuan’s 2024 policy study found that between 2002 and 2022, Indonesia issued 72 regulations related to terrorism and violent extremism. However, explicit references to “women” and “gender” entered this policy field only after nearly two decades, with the first RAN PE in 2020.[8] This shows that gender was not deeply embedded in Indonesia’s counter terrorism architecture from the beginning, but was added over time to a policy field long shaped by legal, intelligence and security institutions.
The shift was partly driven by changes in women’s involvement in extremist networks. Earlier assumptions often treated women as passive supporters or victims. However, studies on Indonesian women extremists have shown that women have taken on more active roles, including recruitment, fund-raising, propaganda, logistical support, attempted attacks and participation in family-based terrorism.[9] The 2018 Surabaya attacks, the 2021 Makassar cathedral bombing and the 2021 attack at the Indonesian National Police Headquarters in Jakarta all involved women perpetrators, challenging the idea that women are peripheral to extremist mobilisation.
The 2026-2029 RAN PE responds to this changed environment more explicitly than the previous framework. Its background section recognises the recruitment and involvement of women and children by terrorist groups, while its principles and themes repeatedly refer to gender, children, vulnerable groups, community resilience, protection and reintegration.[10] The RAN PE’s Theme 4 focuses on the protection and empowerment of women, youth and children, while Theme 6 includes gender-sensitive radicalisation, disengagement, rehabilitation, counselling and reintegration for suspects, defendants, convicted persons, prisoners, former prisoners and individuals exposed to extremist ideology.[11]
This is a positive development. The policy is no longer “adding women” as an afterthought. It creates more entry points for gender-responsive programming. At the same time, the quality of gender mainstreaming depends on whether these entry points transform policy practice or merely expand women’s participation within familiar roles.
Gendered Prevention: Family Resilience and Peace Agency
The prevention-oriented parts of the new RAN PE illustrate both the promise and the limits of gender mainstreaming. Theme 2 focuses on community and family resilience. It frames communities and families as important spaces for preventing the spread of violent extremist ideas and includes actions to strengthen the capacity of village communities, including village officials, religious leaders, customary leaders, women leaders and youth leaders.[12]
This is sensible from a prevention perspective. Families and communities are often the first places where behavioural changes, social isolation, ideological shifts or vulnerability to extremist recruitment become visible. However, when viewed through State Ibuism, this family resilience framing raises an important concern. Women are likely to be incorporated because they are seen as naturally responsible for family stability, child education, moral discipline and social harmony. These roles are valuable, but they can also reinforce the idea that women’s proper contribution to security lies in calming, healing, educating and mediating. This reflects a broader pattern in P/CVE policy, where women are often mobilised as family and community “gatekeepers”, rather than treated as equal security actors.[13]
Theme 4’s language, which frames women as “agents of peace”, presents a similar tension. The RAN PE aims to support women and youth as agents of peace, pluralism and mutual respect. It also calls for activities to improve women and youth communities’ understanding and skills in conflict resolution and to generate success stories featuring women and youth as peace agents.[14] This is a positive step because it recognises women as active contributors to peace and conflict prevention. It also aligns with global Women, Peace and Security norms, which emphasise women’s participation in peacebuilding and conflict prevention.[15]
The security risk is that prevention may become too narrow a role. If women are valued mainly because they are close to families and communities, P/CVE programmes may overburden them with the responsibility for early warning without giving them the requisite authority, resources or protection. It may also obscure other security-relevant roles women play, including as ideological actors, online propagandists, detainees, returnees and former prisoners. A gender-responsive approach should therefore recognise women as peace agents, but also acknowledge them as potential security analysts, policy designers, prison specialists, law enforcement professionals or decision makers.
Prisons, Deradicalisation and Reintegration
The most security-relevant gender shift in the new RAN PE appears in Theme 6 on deradicalisation. The plan explicitly provides for gender-sensitive deradicalisation and disengagement as part of rehabilitation and reintegration.[16] This matters because women involved in terrorism-related offences do not fit neatly into the image of women as mothers or peacebuilders. They may also be ideological actors, recruiters, facilitators, online propagandists, returnees, detainees or former prisoners.
Research has repeatedly shown that Indonesia’s deradicalisation ecosystem has struggled to integrate gender-sensitive approaches. Mutiara[17] argued that deradicalisation programmes in Indonesia have historically lacked a gender-based approach and have remained primarily oriented towards male extremists. The Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC)[18] also highlighted the specific challenges faced by extremist women in Indonesian prisons, including limited tailored programming and difficulties in managing female extremist inmates in ordinary women’s prison settings.
Veronika and Taskarina’s study provided important evidence for this article because it demonstrated how gendered punishment operates within prisons. They argued that women convicted of terrorism offences are often interpreted through gender stereotypes, either as passive victims who lack agency or as deviant women who violate expectations of femininity. These assumptions affect how women are treated throughout the criminal justice process, from investigation and sentencing to imprisonment, rehabilitation and release.
This evidence is central to the security argument. Domestic-oriented prison training does not simply reflect limited resources. Read through State Ibuism, it reveals how women’s reintegration is imagined as a return to acceptable femininity: domestic work, caregiving, moral discipline and family stability. The risk is that gender-sensitive deradicalisation becomes gender essentialist rehabilitation, a narrow form of rehabilitation that treats women’s recovery and reintegration as a return to socially acceptable feminine roles. This can reduce women to wives, mothers, caregivers or community stabilisers, instead of treating them as complex subjects with ideological, psychological and political needs.
This has direct P/CVE implications. If women’s prison programmes focus mainly on domestic skills, moral correction or a return to family roles, they may fail to address the actual drivers of women’s involvement in extremist networks. These may include ideological conviction, coercive marital relationships, online recruitment, trauma, social isolation, economic dependency or the search for belonging and agency. When these factors are not addressed, rehabilitation may produce compliance rather than genuine disengagement.
Reintegration is therefore not only a welfare issue, but also a security function. Former terrorist offenders often face stigma, surveillance and economic insecurity. For women, these challenges may be intensified by gendered expectations. A woman associated with extremism may be judged not only as a security concern, but also as a failed mother, wife or moral figure. Veronika and Taskarina show that women released after terrorism-related imprisonment face enduring stigma and socioeconomic marginalisation, while inadequate prison programmes may make them vulnerable to renewed contact with extremist networks.[19]
A gender-responsive reintegration model should therefore address women’s distinct security-relevant needs. These include protection from coercive spouses or networks, trauma-informed counselling, childcare support, independent livelihood pathways, safe housing, community acceptance and protection from stigma. Addressing these needs benefits P/CVE because it reduces the conditions that can push women back towards old networks or dependency relationships.
The Problem of Instrumental Partnership
The RAN PE’s Theme 9, on partnership and international cooperation, is another important area for gender analysis. Its stated objective is to strengthen meaningful partnerships among ministries, state institutions, societal stakeholders and international actors in P/CVE.[20] The action matrix also references national partnership forums that involve business actors and civil society in post-conflict reconciliation, reconstruction, job creation, facilitation and training opportunities, as well as digital multi-stakeholder partnerships for data and information exchange.[21]
However, partnership language can be progressive while still becoming instrumental. Civil society reflection on the RAN PE has already questioned whether women’s inclusion is meaningful or mainly consultative.[22] If women’s organisations are invited mainly to implement outreach, deliver community messages, provide care work or facilitate access to marginalised groups, partnership may reproduce State Ibuism in institutional form. A women-led civil society becomes valuable because it extends the state’s reach into families and communities, rather than because it shares authority over security policy.
This also creates a security limitation. Women’s organisations often have access to information, relationships and community dynamics that state agencies may struggle to see. If they are treated only as implementers, their knowledge may not shape risk assessments, programme design, monitoring or evaluation. A more transformative interpretation of Theme 9 would treat women-led organisations as agenda-setting actors. They should be involved in planning, budgeting, monitoring, evaluation and policy revision, and not merely in implementation. They should be able to shape what counts as prevention, which indicators are used, how risks are assessed and how reintegration success is measured.
Security Implications: Why Gender Essentialism Weakens P/CVE
The limits of gender mainstreaming in the new RAN PE are not only normative concerns. They also carry direct security implications. If P/CVE policy continues to rely on gender essentialist assumptions, it risks weakening threat assessment, rehabilitation, reintegration and community prevention. Therefore, gender-responsive policy is not only about inclusion. It is also about improving the accuracy and effectiveness of counter terrorism practice.
First, gender stereotypes can distort threat assessments. When women are viewed primarily as mothers, wives, victims or peace agents, security institutions may underestimate women’s ideological commitment, operational capacity or network roles. Indonesia’s own experience shows why this matters. Women have been involved not only as supporters, but also as recruiters, fund-raisers, propagandists, attempted attackers and participants in family-based terrorism. A gender essentialist approach may therefore produce blind spots by treating women as naturally less threatening or less politically motivated. This weakens early warning and case assessment, especially in online spaces, family networks and prison settings, where women’s roles may not fit conventional profiles.
Second, gender essentialist rehabilitation can undermine disengagement. If prison and reintegration programmes focus mainly on domesticity, morality or family return, they may miss the ideological, relational, economic and psychological factors that shape women’s involvement in extremism. This can result in superficial compliance rather than genuine disengagement. The risk is not only that women are restricted by stereotype, but that programmes fail to address the conditions that sustain their vulnerability to extremist networks.
Third, inadequate attention to women’s security-relevant needs can weaken reintegration. These needs include protection from coercive spouses or networks, trauma-informed counselling, childcare support, independent livelihood, safe housing, community acceptance and protection from stigma. Addressing such needs reduces the likelihood that women will return to extremist circles for protection, belonging, income or social acceptance. Therefore, gendered reintegration support should be treated as part of prevention, and not as an aftercare issue separated from security.
Fourth, instrumental partnerships with women-led civil society actors can reduce prevention capacity. Women’s organisations often have access to families, schools, religious communities and local networks that state agencies may struggle to reach. However, if they are included only as outreach implementers or community intermediaries, their knowledge may not shape threat assessments, programme design or evaluation. This reduces the quality of prevention. A stronger implementation of Theme 9 would instead treat women-led organisations as strategic security partners.
Finally, gender mainstreaming should also include masculinities.[23] Extremist recruitment often draws on masculine narratives of honour, protection, grievance, brotherhood and sacrifice. Treating gender as synonymous with women misses how men are also shaped by gendered expectations. A security-oriented gender analysis would therefore examine how femininities and masculinities structure recruitment, detention, disengagement and reintegration. This would make P/CVE strategies more precise.
Conclusion
The 2026-2029 RAN PE marks a significant evolution in Indonesia’s gendered P/CVE policy. Gender mainstreaming is now a formal implementation principle. Women, youth and children have a dedicated theme. Gender-sensitive deradicalisation is explicitly included. Family resilience, digital communication, protection mechanisms and multi-stakeholder partnerships now provide multiple entry points for gender-responsive programming.
However, the deeper challenge remains. Viewed through the lens of State Ibuism, the new RAN PE still tends to make women visible through socially acceptable roles: mothers, caregivers, peace agents, community mediators and protectors of family resilience. These roles matter, but they should not define the limits of women’s participation in P/CVE.
The security risk is that gender mainstreaming may remain procedurally inclusive while leaving important blind spots intact. If women are viewed mainly as stabilisers of families and communities, policy may underestimate their agency in extremist networks, under-address their specific rehabilitation and reintegration needs, and underuse women-led civil society actors as strategic partners.
Indonesia’s new RAN PE has opened an important policy window. The task now is to ensure that gender mainstreaming does not merely mobilise women for family and community resilience but improves the security effectiveness of P/CVE. This means recognising women as security-relevant actors whose agency, vulnerabilities, networks, and post-release needs must be understood accurately. Without this shift, gender mainstreaming may remain inclusive in language while leaving preventable security risks unresolved.
About the Author
Yuslikha Kusuma Wardhani, also known as Ade Banani, is a PhD student at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, specialising in the psychological and gendered dimensions of deradicalisation in Indonesia. She has published several articles on deradicalisation and a book chapter about RAN PE. She can be reached at [email protected] or [email protected].
Thumbnail photo by Ilya Roslan on Unsplash
Citations
[1] Alif Satria, “Two Decades of Counterterrorism in Indonesia: Successful Developments and Future Challenges,” Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses, 14, no. 5 (2022): 7–16, https://rsis.edu.sg/rsis-publication/icpvtr/counter-terrorist-trends-and-analyses-ctta-volume-14-issue-05/;
President of the Republic of Indonesia, Peraturan Presiden Republik Indonesia Nomor 8 tahun 2026 tentang Rencana Aksi Nasional Pencegahan dan Penanggulangan Ekstremisme Berbasis Kekekrasan yang Mengarah pada Terorisme Tahun 2026-2029 (Ministry of the State Secretariat of the Republic of Indonesia, 2026), https://base.api.ikhub.org/assets/Organisasi/8f6a62f9-07c0-4bc9-892e-1a433366f483/files/Sekretariat_I-KHub_BNPT-Salinan_Perpres_Nomor_8_Tahun_2026.pdf.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] The term “Ibuism” comes from the Indonesian word “Ibu”, meaning “mother”, and describes an ideological framework that positions women mainly through their maternal, caregiving and family-oriented roles in society. See Julia Suryakusuma, Ibuisme Negara: Konstruksi Sosial Keperempuanan Orde Baru (Komunitas Bambu, 2011).
[6] The New Order refers to Suharto’s authoritarian regime in Indonesia, which lasted from 1966 to 1998. It was marked by centralised state control, military influence in politics, developmentalist governance and the promotion of state-sanctioned social roles, including gender roles that framed women primarily as wives, mothers and supporters of national stability.
[7] Suryakusuma, Ibuisme Negara.
[8] Komisi Nasional Anti Kekerasan terhadap Perempuan, Suara Perempuan dalam Kebijakan: Riset Kebijakan Ekstremisme Kekerasan dan Gender Indonesia (Komnas Perempuan, 2024).
[9] Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC), Mothers to Bombers: The Evolution of Indonesian Women Extremists (Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, 2017); Amalina Abdul Nasir, “Women in Terrorism: Evolution from Jemaah Islamiyah to Islamic State in Indonesia and Malaysia,” Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses 11, no. 2 (2019): 21–6, https://rsis.edu.sg/rsis-publication/icpvtr/counter-terrorist-trends-and-analyses-ctta-volume-11-issue-2/; Nava Nuriyaniyah, “Not Just Brainwashed: Understanding the Radicalization of Indonesian Female Supporters of the Islamic State,” Terrorism and Political Violence 30, no. 6 (2018): 890–910, https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2018.1481269.
[10] President of the Republic of Indonesia, Peraturan Presiden Republik Indonesia Nomor 8 Tahun 2026.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Suryakusuma, Ibuisme Negara: Konstruksi Sosial Keperempuanan Orde Baru.
[14] President of the Republic of Indonesia, Peraturan Presiden Republik Indonesia Nomor 8 tahun 2026.
[15] Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Understanding the Role of Gender in Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism and Radicalization that Lead to Terrorism: Good Practices for Law Enforcement (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, 2019); Monash Gender, Peace and Security Centre, Misogyny and Violent Extremism in Indonesia, Bangladesh and the Philippines: Implications for Preventing Violent Extremism (UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, 2020), https://asiapacific.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/Field%20Office%20ESEAsia/Docs/Publications/2020/05/BLS20099UNWMisogynyVEMonashWEB0062b.pdf.
[16] President of the Republic of Indonesia, Peraturan Presiden Republik Indonesia Nomor 8 Tahun 2026.
[17] Raneeta Mutiara, “Addressing the Gap: A Need for a Gender-Based Approach in Indonesia’s Deradicalization Program,” Journal of Terrorism Studies 6, no. 2 (2024), https://doi.org/10.7454/jts.v6i2.1077.
[18] Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC), Extremist Women Behind Bars in Indonesia (Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, 2020); Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC), “The Consequences of Renouncing Extremism for Indonesian Women Prisoners,” IPAC Report, no. 83 (2023).
[19] Nuri Widiastuti Veronika and Leebarty Taskarina, “Beyond Knitting and Baking: The Gendered Experience of Indonesian Terrorists’ Imprisonment,” in Geographies of Gendered Punishment: Women’s Imprisonment in Global Context, eds. Anastasia Chamberlen and Mahuya Bandyopadhyay (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024),183–204.
[20] President of the Republic of Indonesia, Peraturan Presiden Republik Indonesia Nomor 8 Tahun 2026.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Komisi Nasional Anti Kekerasan terhadap Perempuan, Suara Perempuan dalam Kebijakan.
[23] Masculinities refer to socially constructed ideals, expectations and practices associated with being male or “manly” in a given context. In P/CVE analysis, the term is useful for examining how extremist narratives may appeal to particular masculine ideals, such as protection, honour, sacrifice, brotherhood, discipline or revenge.
