If, in Indonesia, discussions on “women in politics” have focused on institutional aspects such as quota, it is also important to see what female politicians actually do and which political strategies they mobilize. With the case of Banda Aceh Mayor Illiza Sa`aduddin Djamal, the only (re-)elected female head of local administrations in Aceh, where concerns over Shariah and women`s rights have been growing, this paper looks into how a female politician makes a strategic use of her gender identity in a religiously conservative society. Her two-sided policies of leading a series of sharia crackdowns that seriously limit women`s rights over their bodies and facilitating women`s empowerment and participation in decision-making processes can be interpreted as being connected through the pursuit of conservative motherhood, which is a reasonable strategy for female politicians to justify their presence in societies where women are underrepresented in politics.