The Vlissingen branch of the fundamentalist Protestant party SGP is putting forward a woman as a potential candidate for parliament, even though that would conflict with party rules.

Lilian Janse, who has represented the party on Vlissingen council since 2014, recently failed in her attempt to get the SGP to change its official position on women working in politics.

“We are conviced that that she will be of value to the SGP at a national level,” the local branch told Omroep Zeeland. “Legally they cannot refuse her just because she is a woman.”

Last month party members voted by 299 to 53 against a change to the party’s statutes to support women MPs, put forward by Janse and her local branch in Vlissingen. The statutes currently say that becoming “part of political bodies” conflicts with “women’s calling”.

The right-wing SGP believes the country should be governed “entirely on the basis of the ordinances of God as revealed in the Holy Scriptures”, and therefore holds that women should not play an active role in political life.

The party has been embroiled in a long legal battle about the role of women.

In 2013, following rulings by the Dutch supreme court and the European Court of Human Rights, the SGP agreed to drop its ban on including women on candidate lists. However, the party’s founding principles were not amended — a compromise seen at the time as politically strategic.

The party board said during last month’s debate it “does not consider it wise to reopen debate” on this arrangement, as called for by Janse, and called on members to reject the motion.

Instead, “the board wants to direct its full energy toward fulfilling the party’s mission of promoting the blessings of Biblical values and norms in the public domain”, officials said.

Janse’s motion proposed replacing the current wording with a new formulation that would allow women to decide for themselves whether a political role is appropriate, “with due regard for the place given to her by God”.