M

ore than a century after the death of Raden Ajeng Kartini, the first Indonesian woman to demand the emancipation of women in the country, activists say gender inequality remains in place.

'€œWe have made very slow progress since her death [in 1904] in terms of gender equality and it is even more visible now that we are supposedly a middle-income country,'€ said Yuniyanti Chuzaifah, chairperson of the National Commission on Violence against Women (Komnas Perempuan).

Yuniyanti said although women had joined the workforce in the millions, they remained the victims of discrimination in the workplace.

According to the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), in 2012, 43 million, or 38 percent, of the 112 million workers in the Indonesian workforce were women.

Indonesia is also ranked 132 out of 187 countries in the United Nations Development Program'€™s (UNDP) Gender Inequality Index (GII), partially because there is only a 51.2 percent female participation rate in the workforce, in comparison to 81.2 percent for male participation.

Yuniyanti said women in a variety of occupations faced different types of discrimination, including sexual harassment, salary disparities, unfair dismissal and a lack of rights protection in the informal sector.

To make matters worse, existing regulations such as Law No. 1/1974 on marriage and Law No. 36/2008 on income tax, make it possible for firms to discriminate against their employees based on gender, so that they can pay women less than men.

According to both laws, men are legally considered the heads of the family and the breadwinners. As a result, married men can access additional benefits from their company on top up their salaries to provide for their wife and children, including an additional tax exemption for their dependents. Women, married or otherwise, cannot.

'€œThese laws don'€™t consider unmarried women who are single mothers or the sole providers for their parents. It reinforces the stigma that career women are selfish for leaving their children. People should realize that women also work to support their families, not just for self-fulfillment,'€ Yuniyanti said.

Mike Ferawati of the Indonesian Women'€™s Coalition (KPI) said articles on female workers in Law No. 13/2003 on labor did more to hurt than help women, as several companies declined to comply.

'€œWe'€™ve had reports of companies not hiring married women as they didn'€™t want to give them paid maternity or menstrual leave,'€ she said.

She cited some women in airline companies were unfairly dismissed as they had gained weight after pregnancy, as well as examples of the sexual harassment of women as there was no law against it in the workplace. (fss)