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Efforts needed to expand gender equality in workplace
Female leaders of Indonesia’s state and private sectors are striving to achieve gender equality in the workplace, something they acknowledge as having long been overlooked in the formal work environment.
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Gender equality illustration (Shutterstock/File)
F
emale leaders of Indonesia’s state and private sectors are striving to achieve gender equality in the workplace, something they acknowledge as having long been overlooked in the formal work environment.
They explained their efforts during a joint event titled “Ring the Bell for Gender Equality” initiated by UN Women, UN Global Compact, UN Sustainable Stock Exchange and several other partners.
As the presence of women in the workplace increases, stakeholders need to ensure their rights and safety so that their contribution can be translated into a larger contribution to economic growth, Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said.
Sri Mulyani, perhaps the highest-profile female figures in finance in Indonesia, emphasized the policymaking process in the country increasingly involved women’s empowerment issues.
“The principles of gender equality are in our national development plan because we have mainstreamed those aspects into our state budgets,” she said recently. “Gender equality is a strategic issue from the perspective of economics and society, thus it has to become much more resilient than it is at the moment.”
Sri stated that only 54 percent of Indonesian women of working age participated in the labor market, compared to over 83 percent of men in the same category. The average wage for women, said Sri, was also 32 percent lower than that for men.
“This is caused by the number of obstacles women have to get past in order to participate in the economy and even in balancing their life and work,” she said.
