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egulations designed to accommodate women’s needs were needed to boost the number of female policymakers, researchers and officials said on Thursday.

Females in higher echelons now make up only 22.38 percent or 6,540 of 29,221 senior officials across the country’s ministries, a survey on women in the bureaucracy revealed.

The “Preliminary Mapping of Female Civil Servants in 34 Ministries” survey was conducted by the Center for Political Studies (Puskapol) under the University of Indonesia’s (UI) Faculty of Social and Political Sciences.

For the survey, the center interviewed 480 female high- and low-ranking officials in 11 selected ministries. Although 45 percent of respondents held a master’s degree, the researchers found that regulations inhibited them from advancing their careers.

Executive director of Puskapol, Sri Budi Eko Wardani, said that 59 percent of respondents said the low number of women in higher echelons was because they put family first.

Ani Sutjipto, a gender expert at UI, said Indonesia had already made efforts to boost the presence of women in policymaking by gender mainstreaming policies and the setting up of the women’s empowerment state ministry.

As in the US and Australia, Ani said, the state should further support women given their reproductive roles. If more women chose careers over becoming pregnant, this could have a negative impact on future generations, she said.

She also referred to gender and racial affirmative action policies to achieve a “representative bureaucracy” in the US.

Ani said that what appeared to be gender-neutral regulations could actually hinder increased roles for women. “We are seeing a wider trend” in the use of “professional-based” indexes such as merit and performance. Such seemingly neutral regulations had different impacts on men and women, she said.

The continued use of such indexes alone “will never settle” the problem of the lack of women among policy makers, Ani said.

Mimi Nasution, an official with the Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection Ministry, said it was important to keep an eye on future regulations on civil servants because the draft bill on the state apparatus only stipulated that recruitment and promotion be “non discriminatory”.

Of 34 ministries, only the Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection; and the Tourism and Creative Economy Ministries are headed by women, respectively Linda Amelia Sari Gumelar and Mari E. Pangestu. Another woman, Armida Alisyahbana is the National Development Planning minister, while Health Minister Endang R. Sedyaningsih died of cancer on May 2.

Welya Safitri, a senior politician from the National Mandate Party (PAN), said affirmative action in the party had led to the presence of many female executives down to local levels.

However some competent women were held back by stereotypes that they interrupted meetings and talked too much, she said, although she had noticed these habits were equally prevalent among men.

To reach senior posts, “men and women need to have masculine and feminine sides,” Welya said.