A female minister in the Indonesian government has acknowledged how hard it has been for the country to eradicate a patriarchy that limits chances for women entering the workplace.

Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati, former World Bank managing director and chief operating officer, told participants of the 2018 International Monetary Fund-World Bank Group Annual Meetings about survival in the male-dominated financial sector in Indonesia.

“Finance has always been perceived as a man’s job. It is male-dominated,” Sri Mulyani said during the seminar “Empowering Women in the Workplace”, which has several of the world’s top female leaders as speakers. “For a woman to be in a position, they have to prove that they are twice as good as men.”

The list of Indonesia’s finance ministers would bear out much of what she said as she is the only woman on the list. Sri Mulyani is currently serving in the post for the third time.

In the event, Sri Mulyani sat next to her long-time friend, Christine Lagarde, IMF managing director and France’s first female finance minister, as they both explained about challenges and opportunities faced by women in the labor market.

Sri Mulyani pointed to an anomaly she picked up at the state-funded National College of Accounting (STAN), where she saw that female students had some of the highest GPAs, but later fell behind their male counterparts when they started working in the ministry.

The challenge is even greater if the female STAN graduates decide to get married. Most household burdens will be placed on their shoulders instead of being distributed evenly with their husbands, said the mother of three.

“Motherhood [parenthood] is seen as a woman’s job. They have to continue working while also raising a family,” said Sri Mulyani.

Working women also have to face the reality that society does not reward them as they deserve, as reflected in lower wages and fewer leadership positions, in comparison with their male counterparts, she said.

During the talks, Sri Mulyani half-jokingly suggested to Lagarde to include women’s roles in the households, such as taking care of children, as one of the components for calculating GDP growth given its significant contribution to the economy, to which Lagarde responded with a laugh.

According to Sri Mulyani, high-intensity yet unpaid household activity involving women has yet to be properly valued.

Responding to Sri Mulyani's suggestion, Lagarde said that the IMF would hold a conference on statistics some time in November to discuss ways of compiling more data that could be included as GDP components, including household chores.

She offered a wider take from a recent IMF staff discussion note, which said that greater female participation in the labor market would lead to bigger economic gains because males and females would complement each other’s work.

“The contribution of women in reducing the gap in terms of labor, cost and wages is good for the economy, is good for competitiveness [...] and prosperity,” Lagarde said.

She cited another finding by IMF staff that the female workforce faces an 11 percent higher threat from automation compared with the male workforce, which only has a 9 percent risk of job termination as a result of technological advancement.

Furthermore, the study also found that 26 million female jobs spread in 30 countries were currently at risk, she added.

Therefore, Lagarde suggested that women move more into the services sector, which will be safer from automation than the manufacturing sector.

She also urged stakeholders to equip women with the proper set of skills to enhance their opportunities, saying that people should “invest in women’s education”.

Bank of Canada’s first female senior deputy governor, Carolyn Wilkins, said how she had been exposed to the gender bias between male and female workers as she had always favored male leaders growing up and only started to look at female leaders later.

She suggested that economic inclusion through financial technology would help widen women’s opportunities as they would have access to capital for entrepreneurship.

“In many parts of the world where many are unbanked, financial services can help women reach out to male-dominated sectors,” Wilkins said, citing examples of rising female leadership in tech start-ups.