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study says that 55 percent of Indonesian women report that having children has slowed their careers, versus 54 percent of respondents globally who said the opposite.

Saut Maria Santosa, a senior director at research firm Accenture Indonesia, said that women’s careers slowed as they turned down opportunities, such as promotions, that might interfere their roles in the family.

According to the survey, the percentage of women reporting that motherhood had slowed their careers was “still high”, leading to lost potential, as women, given their representation in the population, could collectively contribute more to the economy.

According to the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), women comprise 40.8 percent of the nation’s population while only comprising 38.2 percent of the nation’s work force of around 130 million people.

Meanwhile, 46 percent of respondents said that their careers did not weigh upon their family lives. “It comes down to how women manage and balance time between work and family,” Saut said.

The multitasking that women had to do was proof of their resilience, she added.

The survey also said that 58 percent of respondents globally accepted more responsibility or different career roles after having children, demonstrating their flexibility in accepting new challenges. “As many as 40 percent of Indonesian women said that hard work was the main factor of career growth,” Saut said.

She added that culture was increasingly shifting in favor of women, reflected by the presence of more women executives.

The shift was triggered in part by a need for both husbands and wives to work to support their household.

Seventy-seven percent of Indonesian respondents said that their spouses held full-time jobs, versus 73 percent globally.

“As women move to executive posts, the motivation to remain working is self-fulfillment. However, expenses do tend to rise in parallel with income,” Saut said.

Indonesian career women, more than their peers in Southeast Asia, have seized opportunities provided by employers for flexible work arrangements.

Saut said that the survey said that Indonesia was second in the number of women opting for flexible work arrangement schemes offered by enterprises. “This is a sign that Indonesia should become more familiar in ways to improve women’s engagement in the workforce,” she said.

Fifty-two percent of women surveyed said that they had applied for shared opportunities or split work with colleagues to create space in their work schedules, while another 44 percent opted for flexible work times. Thailand was first place at 48 percent in the number of respondents gravitating toward flexible work times. The global average was 34 percent.

According to Saut, women in Indonesia chose flexible work arrangements so they could find enough time for work and home duties, especially if they were still caring for young children.

She added that flexible work arrangement were not a new concept in the Indonesian workplace. Up to 42 percent of respondents said that they had signed up for flexible work arrangements in the past 1 or 3 years, with another 36 percent saying that they had practiced such arrangements for more than 3 years.