Today, 100 years later, there has been significant progress achieved in women’s empowerment and participation through determined advocacy, practical action and enlightened policy making.

However, in too many countries and societies, women’s social position is still subordinate and lots of women are still trapped by poverty, discrimination, unemployment, illiteracy, intimidation and violence.

The United Nations’ theme for this year’s IWD is “Equal access to education, training and science and technology: Pathway to decent work for women”.

Strengthening the bridges between education, training, science and technology and the labor market is important in order to promote equal opportunity to decent employment.

As a basic human right, education is a key driver of economic growth and social change and a basis of women’s empowerment.

The global economy is increasingly knowledge-driven, and requires an educated workforce able to apply the existing technology and to develop new science and technologies to combat poverty and adapt to emerging issues such as climate change and pandemics.

Therefore, ensuring that women acquire the necessary skills and competencies in science and technology is an economic imperative.

It could also empower women and girls to make informed decisions on critical aspects of their lives, including their health.

Nevertheless, like other members of society, women still suffer the impact of repression, corruption and lack of social justice.

In Indonesia, women nowadays have greater access to education and opportunities in the work place than ever before. Noticeably since the reform era of around early 2000, the socio-economic status and freedom of expression among Indonesian women have increased remarkably.

More and more Indonesian women are entering higher education, earning their own income and have the autonomy to choose where they would like to be enrolled for higher education or employment.

As for some Indonesian women who have the luxury of combining work and family, many are pursuing their career as professionals, bureaucrats, politicians, lecturers, teachers, researchers as well as entrepreneurs.

Indonesian women have now come a long way; not only do they contribute to the labour force, they increasingly also determine policies at the highest levels of both government and the private sector.

Indonesia has achieved overall good progress toward gender parity in the net enrollment ratio at primary and junior secondary levels. Nearly 98 percent of girls now receive basic education with 54.5 percent making it to senior high school, thanks to the nine-year compulsory basic education program.

Literacy is a powerful tool as it allows women to read and understand their rights. While literacy levels are high, more women need to make it to higher levels of education so they can pursue careers if they choose to and occupy top decision-making positions in the government, legislation and private sector.

Progress has been made in advancing women’s participation in science and technology education. At the tertiary level, women now dominate in some fields of science, particularly life sciences and humanities.

However, women generally continue to be under-represented in computer sciences and sciences such as physics and agriculture research.

Nowadays, Indonesia has skilful prominent women concentrating on science and technology. To name a few, Deby Susanti Vinski is one of Indonesia’s anti-aging doctors. Prof. Sri Kumalaningsih focuses on agriculture and food technology, and Zullies Ekawati has carried out extensive research on pharmaceutical drugs and could now help millions of people recover from diseases by measuring the human genes and reaction of medicines.

Srisupar Yati Soenarto is a paediatrician who introduced the famous diarrhoea medicine called Oralit, and Sidrotun Naim was the first and only Indonesian woman expert focusing on a fatal shrimp disease.

As mandated by the Indonesian Constitution and as part of its global commitments to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Education For All (EFA), and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the government has been implementing general policies to promote basic education by improving access and expanding learning opportunities for all school-aged children.

The government has also issued specific policies to promote gender equality in education by providing equal access for all boys and girls to quality and gender-sensitive education; and implementation strategies by creating a national movement on gender-sensitive education involving related stakeholders such as parents, community leaders, NGOs, as well as private and industrial sectors.

However, access to education in Indonesia becomes increasingly more limited as children go to higher levels of education.

There are complex gender-related issues that become barriers to achieving gender equality in education such as gender biased textbooks which reinforce gender stereotypes with more illustrations showing males/boys than females/girls, and more prominent men’s names are cited than those of prominent women; gender stereotyping in the selection of specialization at vocational schools and universities in which social sciences are generally dominated by female students and technical sciences by male students; inadequate programs of the national policies to directly address inequalities in education by increasing access and participation of disadvantaged children, including poor and marginalized girls; inadequate gender awareness and expertise to socialize gender concepts within the Indonesian socio-cultural and religious beliefs and traditions; early marriage that could affect girls’ access to and participation in education; and inadequate reliable sex-disaggregated data that hampers the education sector’s ability to assess progress beyond access and participation.

Moreover, gender-related problems are indeed significantly inherent in the state system and cultural structure due to typical stereotype differentiating women and men, cultural and traditional values disrespecting women, and religious beliefs entrenching patriarchy.

Only through women’s full and equal participation in all areas of public and private life can we hope to achieve a sustainable, peaceful and just society.

As education is the key to greater empowerment for women, investing in women and girls through the education sector has therefore a positive multiplier effect on the well-being of their families, their communities and nations.

The writer is a PhD candidate at the Australian demographic and social research institute, Australian National University.

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