BEYOND LEGAL PROTECTION: THE INSTITUTIONAL PROTECTION GAP IN ADDRESSING SEXUAL AND GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE IN INDONESIA
Abstract
Violence against women continues to challenge local governance even where formal protection policies exist. This study examines why legal and policy commitments do not automatically translate into substantive protection for women, using Tasikmalaya City, West Java, Indonesia, as an explanatory qualitative case. The article re-analyses interview, observation, documentary, and local administrative data originally collected for a study of the implementation of Local Regulation No. 8 of 2015 on the protection of women and children. The empirical material includes local government agencies, the Integrated Technical Implementation Unit for the Protection of Women and Children (UPTD PPA), and civil society actors including PUSPA and Taman Jingga. Reported cases in the administrative series supplied for this manuscript increased from 42 in 2020 to 164 in 2024, but qualitative evidence indicates that rising reports can reflect both persistent violence and greater willingness to report. The study identifies five connected constraints: delayed institutionalization, limited human and financial resources, incomplete survivor-service infrastructure, weak preventive outreach, and persistent patriarchal norms. It also finds that civil-society advocacy and cross sector collaboration were important in strengthening local response capacity, including the establishment of UPTD PPA. Building on policy-capacity, feminist institutionalist, collaborative governance, and survivor-centered perspectives, the article proposes the concept of an Institutional Protection Gap: the distance between formal recognition of women’s rights and the institutional and societal capacity to make protection accessible, coordinated, preventive, survivor centered, and sustainable. The study contributes a post-adoption perspective to research on violence against women policy in decentralized settings and develops the related concept of a reporting paradox for evaluating local policy outcomes.