Khofifah Indar Parawansa is an Indonesian politician who is the current Governor of East Java. Previously she served as the 27th Minister of Social Affairs. She resigned from the position in January 2018 in order to run in the East Java gubernatorial election. She had previously served as the fifth Minister for Female Empowerment, as well as the chairwoman of the Family Planning Board in the National Unity Cabinet, and was also a former Deputy Speaker of the Indonesian House of Representatives. She was the first member of parliament who gave formal critical speech toward Soeharto regime, highlighting 1997 General Election fraud during 1998 General Session of People's Consultative Assembly. She was elected chairwoman of the, an Islamic women's group affiliated to Nahdlatul Ulama, for the 2000–2005 term, and reelected three times, most recently in 2016 until 2021. In August 2015, she launched the "2015 Prostitution-Free National Movement" during a working visit to Jayapura, West Papua. The Tanjung Elmo red-light district located in Sentani, West Papua, was to be closed down. Commercial sex workers were to be sent back to their hometowns and given Rp 5 million from the Social Affairs Ministry in addition to another Rp 5 million given by the Jayapura provincial government, in order to find "decent jobs". In early 2016, she announced the government aimed to shut down 100 red-light districts by 2019 in a bid to eradicate prostitution. As of February 2016, 68 red-light districts had been closed down. In response to homophobic rhetoric from some officials and religious preachers, Khofifah on 16 January 2016 told the House of Representatives that the Social Affairs Ministry does not acknowledge the categorization or term "LGBT" but only recognizes "people living with HIV/AIDS and minorities". She said the ministry's task is "to restore the respective social behaviors of men and women", an effort which "needs to be maximized in order to go back to the way it was before". Responding to the Jakarta November 2016 protests by Muslim groups and extremists against the city's Christian and ethnic Chinese governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, Khofifah as well as Indonesian National Armed Forces Commander Gatot Nurmantyo, Indonesian National PoliceTito Karnavian and Islamic activist Yenny Wahid marched in support of interfaith unity.
She was married to Indar Parawansa, also known as Daeng Beta. Khofifah has four children, a daughter and three sons: Fatimahsang Mannagalli Parawansa, Jalaluddin Mannagalli Parawansa, Yusuf Mannagalli Parawansa and Ali Mannagalli Parawansa.
