JP/Budhi Button

Inequality of opportunity between the genders is shrinking but at a laborious pace. With a 32 percent average gender gap among 149 countries, the World Economic Forum in 2018 forecast that women will have to wait 108 more years to no longer feel disadvantaged — a time frame no one can afford.

Having realized the hazards of gender inequality in Indonesia’s development progress, such as a high dependency rate, low income per capita and lower productivity, the government has adopted “gender-responsive budgeting”.

Through the state budget, billions of rupiah have been allocated for different forms of social assistance aiming to improve the lives of women. Millions of jobs are created and the number of unemployed Indonesians continues to decline: from 6.87 million in February 2018 to 6.82 million in February 2019.

There is only one thing that Indonesia does better than the rich Western countries in this regard; and it is on “wage equality” between men and women, ranked 32 out of 149 countries according to the 2018 Gender Gap Index of the WEF. However, the index still shows women’s low achievement compared to men such as in educational attainment, health, economic participation and opportunity.

The national sex-disaggregated data also confirms these slow changes, with women’s participation in the workforce climbing from 55.44 percent in February 2018 to only 55.5 percent in February 2019, most of which is in low-paying, low-status and low-security jobs. Meanwhile, the participation rate of men was 83 percent in February 2018 and 83.18 percent in February 2019 according to Statistics Indonesia (BPS).

Incorporating gender issues when setting budgets is certainly a good start, as Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, remarked.

But budgeting is only the first push to make development equal. What comes after is contingent on how the government conducts its responsibilities.

A reality check shows gender-responsive budgeting varies between regions. East Java’s government has mainstreamed gender into development strategies and allocated its resources to achieve gender equality and overcome marginalization. Under its former governor Soekarwo and now under former women empowerment minister Kofifah Indar Parawansa, budgets are allocated to tackle the “feminization of poverty” — or increasing poverty bias against women or female-headed households — through the Jalin Matra program, which has lifted over 70,000 widows out of poverty.

Conversely, in Makassar, South Sulawesi, while gender-responsive budgeting has become a trend, implementation also varies among municipality offices. For instance, the health agency makes no mention of gender-responsive elements in the budget allocation.

Based on the study by Agam in 2016, this would have negative implications on how budgets are allocated for development issues such as child mortality, as a consequence of denying access to basic health education to mothers.

As in the central government many local officials are still gender blind, thinking that incorporating gender equality elements in budgeting is unnecessary.

Another misinterpretation is that gender-responsive budgeting is nothing more than disbursing money for both men and women.

To achieve equality, what’s also important is using the budget for intervention and programs to overcome barriers to women’s pursuit of their wellbeing. Understanding which programs are working and which are not helping to reduce the gender gap is key to making the budget effective and efficient.

For instance, a region might have very low girls’ school enrolment but the solutions might not lie in purely education-related programs since other background issues may contribute to the problem. Hence, the local government should first assess the relation among these different problems to determine the right intervention that can make development equal for both genders.

If the root causes of low school enrolment are a slowdown of economic growth and poverty, the intervention could be conditional cash transfers (CCT), financial assistance to strengthen the local economy and empowering poor households, on the condition that the girls must attend school.

Evidence abounds of the beneficial impacts of CCT. A 2015 study by Naila Kabeer and Hugh Waddington found that CCT improves school enrolment, reduces child labor and increases household spending, particularly in their study of programs across Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and Asia.

Meanwhile Indonesia’s CCT program called Program Keluarga Harapan has not touched the feminization of poverty, unlike Mexico, for instance.

The program named Oportunidades has continuously helped Mexico’s poor, including female-headed households, to overcome poverty. A study in 2012 revealed that after six years of receiving benefits, recipients’ income increased 22 percent, and standards of living also improved even when households stopped receiving aid. Another positive impact included increased school enrolment — 20 percent for girls and 10 percent for boys.

Meanwhile, girls’ low school enrolment rates could be the result of discriminatory norms such as underage marriage, which leads to girls dropping out more than boys, among other negative effects. In West Lombok, it was estimated in 2015 that the child marriage rate was as high as 56 percent of children under the age of 18.

West Lombok Regent Fauzan Khalid issued a bylaw last year to prevent child marriage, thanks to assistance and consultation with the Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection Ministry. The regency then used its budget to tackle issues that exacerbate underage marriage, such as marriage-related decision-making and local norms. Successful programs include the Anti Merarik Kodeq Movement against the abuse of the local custom of eloping, and Gawe Bajang Bercerite in which teenagers share experiences including on the negative effects of child marriage.

In 2019, the child marriage rate in West Lombok declined remarkably to 20 percent of marriages. Recognizing the interconnectedness between issues is therefore critical to allow the state budget to be used efficiently while addressing different problems in just one program.

Women tend to have fewer choices than men on what they want to do with their lives. Inevitably, the lack of women’s “free will” is deemed irrelevant to something as important as “economic development”. And that is just wrong.

As gender inequality results from social, economic and political issues that devalues women, apart from gender-responsive budgeting, the government must also ensure the responsiveness of programs and interventions for both men and women and whether chosen solutions can address the root causes effectively.

Without careful monitoring and evaluation to analyze whether a program addresses the different priorities and needs of women and men, and the impact of programs on gender relations, Indonesia would see another trillion spent in the name of gender equality without real impacts on the lives of women.

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The writer is a development economist with interests in multidimensional poverty alleviation, regional inequality and Islamic social finance.

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