In women we trust: female brokers in Indonesian village governance

This article explores the role of female brokers in Indonesian villages. These brokers, who are villagers themselves, help ordinary women solve their everyday problems by assisting them to access basic public services. Studies of brokerage have rarely paid attention to gender. This article attempts to fill this gap by identifying patterns of gendered brokerage in rural Indonesia. We find that the type of village regime influences the degree and type of roles played by women brokers. Within villages where governance is relatively closed and less democratic, female brokers play more active roles than in more open regimes where villagers can access decision-makers directly. We also find that women brokers tend to focus on micro-level everyday issues linked to women’s domestic…