Women play a significant part in Indonesia’s economy.
Statistics Indonesia data from 2018 revealed that 64.5 percent of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in Indonesia were managed by women. In 2017, MSMEs accounted for 99.9 percent of all businesses in the country.
Despite their significance, gender inequality still hinders the fulfillment of women’s economic rights.
Recognizing this obstacle, UN Women, a United Nations entity working for the empowerment of women, recently teamed up with Indonesian super app Gojek to empower Indonesian women economically.
On Sept. 7, both parties signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) outlining how they could strengthen their synergy to advocate for women’s economic rights. Building women’s capacity for entrepreneurship will also be a big part of this collaboration.
The collaboration seeks to address several specific issues.
First, Indonesian female entrepreneurs tend to work in business lines with lower productivity rates compared to their male counterparts. Furthermore, these female entrepreneurs also have more restricted access to skills development training, technology as well as business networks.
These problems are systematically rooted within cultural norms that are discriminatory against women.
The current COVID-19 situation has further worsened women’s economic problems. Both UN Women and Gojek believe that by empowering women economically, we can push towards gender equality, benefiting women, their families, our communities and the nation itself.
Three core areas
To support female entrepreneurs, while helping women’s economic potentials to flourish during the pandemic and beyond, the partnership covers three core areas.
The first one seeks to encourage entrepreneurship among women by developing their capabilities and boosting their knowledge.
The second one involves collecting new data to produce new analysis on the most recent impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on local MSMEs and other Gojek partners (especially women). This strategy is particularly important to formulate data-driven strategies and policies to bolster the national economy.
Finally, the third pillar involves promoting women’s safety in public spaces to ensure their environment is conducive to their attempt to participate fully in all aspects of public life, including their pursuit of economic opportunities.
“We believe that boosting women’s economic participation plays a role in the economic transformation to ensure a more sustainable and inclusive development in Indonesia. It is important that all of us make sure that the COVID-19 recovery can create equal economic opportunities for everyone,” UN Women representative and liaison to ASEAN Jamshed Kazi said.
“Oftentimes, various stakeholders fail to understand women’s unique needs, while ecosystems that support their business opportunity development are still few and far between. Our strong partnership with Gojek seeks to focus on introducing innovative and data-driven approaches to change the status quo,” Kazi continued.
According to Kazi, by reaping maximum benefit from efficient information and technology, UN Women and Gojek can attain their common vision of helping underprivileged women to overcome economic obstacles.
“We need to make sure no one is left behind, especially in the highly challenging times we’re in now,” Kazi asserted.
UN Women also collaborates with the Indonesian government and other stakeholders, including the private sector, to help them insert gender perspectives into their COVID-19 mitigation plans.
As an example of such collaboration, UN Women has worked together with the private sector to integrate gender equality into business practices and cultures.
Specifically, the business players achieve this by implementing women’s empowerment principles in their workplaces. At the same time, these private sector entities also use the WeLearn online platform to boost female entrepreneurs’ access to the market and financial assistance.
As a private entity, Gojek recognizes the importance of gender-inclusive economic empowerment programs.
“We commit ourselves to support the economic empowerment of underprivileged individuals in our midst – especially women. This commitment is part of our mission to create social impact through technology,” Gojek chief of corporate affairs Nila Marita said.
“We believe that women have to get equal access to economic opportunities so our society and economy can enjoy inclusive and just growth,” she asserted.
“Therefore, we are happy to strengthen our cooperation with UN Women and build a mutual commitment to empower female entrepreneurs through training programs and capacity building opportunities. At the same time, we also ensure the safety of women within and without our platform,” she concluded.
Gojek’s initiatives for women’s empowerment
Gojek is no stranger to efforts to advance women’s empowerment and hence a natural partner for UN Women to reach out to women entrepreneurs. As the largest super app in Indonesia, whose production value amounted to 1% of Indonesia’s GDP in 2019, Gojek is home for women entrepreneurs that mostly own micro and small businesses. According to a study by the Demographic Institute of the School of Economics and Business of the University of Indonesia, 76% of GoSend social sellers, 42% of GoFood merchants, and 39% of GoPay merchants are women. Therefore, Gojek rolled out several initiatives focusing on women a few years ago. First of all is Gojek Wirausaha (Gojek Entrepreneurship), a capacity-building program focusing on boosting business skills joined by thousands of businesswomen.
The second one is the Gojek Xcelerate Women Founders. This is an accelerator program focusing on digital startups initiated by women.
Last but not least is Gojek’s campaign on bolstering women travelers’ safety across Indonesia, complemented by a bystander intervention training in partnership with local feminist non-governmental organization Hollaback! Jakarta.
The campaign also sees Gojek amping up the number of its safety shelters for women in crowded sites – especially in commuting transit points – across Indonesia’s various big cities.
Gojek has conducted the campaign and set up the infrastructure in observance of safety protocols for women outlined in a 2019 UN Women report called After Dark: Encouraging Safe Transit for Women Travelling at Night.
In 2019, Gojek became the first on-demand technology company to conduct a bystander intervention on a national scale. A large chunk of Gojek’s training seeks to help its driver partners recognize forms of sexual harassment in the public space while giving them the readily available know-how to help the victims.
In the same year, Gojek became the only technology platform in Southeast Asia to be invited to share its experiences in conducting programs to empower women entrepreneurs at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
Further, Gojek’s commitment to women’s empowerment has been recognized by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s 2019 Gates Annual Letter. The letter testified just how women could build a whole new life by merely using the Gojek technology in their cell phones.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Gojek also commits itself to improving its way of doing business. It also commits itself to accelerating the business digitalization of local MSMEs to help them adapt faster to an economy that has increasingly become dependent upon technology.
With Gojek’s digital solutions, the female entrepreneurs who operate various scales and types of businesses could digitize their entire business process – from marketing, ordering process, logistics and payments to administrative matters.
The collaboration between UN Women and Gojek reflects the collective effort to increase cooperation with the public sector and push more companies to invest in the economic empowerment of women.
The investment is expected to accelerate all the advances and achievements that the gender equality movement has been striving for. At the same time, the investment could also eradicate poverty and create inclusive economic growth in Indonesia.
