Transgender Women as a Subaltern Group in Public Policy Formulation in South Sulawesi

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-545-4_5How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Subaltern; Transgender Women; Public Policy; South Sulawesi; Gender

Abstract

This paper aims to examine the position of transgender women, who are culturally recognized as one of the gender diversities in Bugis society, in the formulation of public policy in South Sulawesi. This paper is based on qualitative research analyzing primary data in the form of interviews with the South Sulawesi Transgender and Bissu Community (KWRSS), as well as literature related to subalterns and policy formulation in South Sulawesi. This paper uses the concept of subalternism from Gayatri C. Spivak and the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) approach developed by John W. Kingdon (1984). Based on the analysis, this paper shows that although culturally recognized as part of gender diversity in South Sulawesi, transgender women or calabai are still in a subaltern position in the policy-making process because their gender expression is not recognized by the state through the local government. They do not have access to the representation or decision-making processes. The results of the analysis using MSF show that the policy formulation process in South Sulawesi is still shaped by the convergence of the problem stream driven by intolerant groups and the media in society, which constructs the view that non-binary gender expression is a social problem, with the views of government elites who always view gender expression from the perspective of religion and morality. The convergence of these two streams then opened a policy window for the emergence of exclusionary policies such as Circular Letter No. 420/8437/Disdik, which prohibits the dissemination of LGBT ideas in educational settings, and the discourse on the anti-LGBT draft regional regulation in Makassar. Meanwhile, the policy stream containing alternative ideas from civil society, academics, and non-binary groups themselves did not have the power to influence the policy process and were not involved in the policy formulation process. As a result, the resulting policies were not only exclusive but also had implications for the rights of transgender women as citizens.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Ona Mariani
AU  - Sukri Tamma
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/03/13
TI  - Transgender Women as a Subaltern Group in Public Policy Formulation in South Sulawesi
BT  - Proceedings of the World Conference on Governance and Social Sciences 2025 (WCGSS 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 54
EP  - 63
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-545-4_5
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-545-4_5
ID  - Mariani2026
ER  -