In conjunction with the commemoration of the International Women’s Day on 8 March 2018, five working women representing the government, practitioner, trade union, women’s worker and the ILO interactively discussed discrimination and violence against women at the workplaces and efforts taken towards gender equality. The interactive discussion was part of the ILO’s effort to promote gender equality at work titled “It is Time for Gender Equality through Collective Bargaining and Agreements” conducted in Jakarta.

“Collective bargaining is one of the key tools to ensure gender equality at the work. However, we need to have a strong representation of women in unions so that women’s issues such as menstruation, maternity protection and so forth can be included in collective negotiations and agreement,” said Elly R. Silaban, Staff Programming of Textile Union (Garteks), as one of the panels.

Meanwhile, Sumondang, Head of Unit of Labour Relation, Ministry of Manpower, reminded that labour laws and regulations in Indonesia did not differentiate women and men. The laws and regulations were equally applied for all Indonesian workers regardless their gender.
“The government has already taken some efforts to eliminate causing factors of discrimination at the workplace. The country has also ratified the ILO Conventions No. 100 and 111 regarding discrimination and equal treatment at work,” she added.

During the discussion, Aline Adita, a TV personality, model and entrepreneur, shared her experience dealing with sexual harassment. Just like any other women workers, she admitted that her profession as model and entertainer was vulnerable to sexual harassment. “However, it is still difficult for women to be open about this as we are still afraid of the judgment given by the society and we are still bound by traditional norms,” told Aline.

Pipit Savitri, Communications and Partnership Officer of the ILO’s Better Work Indonesia agreed that sexual harassment was one of the discriminative practices faced by women workers, in addition to various other discrimination practices from recruitment, wage gap to promotion and representation. To tackle this problem, the ILO-BWI recently launched a gender strategy for its participating garment export-oriented factories.

“As part of our gender strategy, we encourage women workers to speak up and to voice their aspiration and concerns. We also encourage them to step up and talk in the forums such as the Collective Bargaining Agreement Negotiation or through the Bipartite Cooperation Forum or any other meetings and discussions in a factory. We learn that after participating in the training, female supervisors are found to be more productive at work,” said Pipit, highlighting efforts taken by ILO-BWI programme to promote gender equality at work.

In addition, Elly emphasized the important participation of men in gender equality progammes. “We cannot realize gender equality without the involvement of men,” she said. Meanwhile Aline highlighted women’s empowerment as the key for equality. “Gender equality is important, but women’s empowerment is more important,” she concluded.

The interactive discussion was part of the ILO’s event in promoting gender equality at work. The event was opened by Haiyani Rumondang, Director General of Industrial Relations, Ministry of Manpower and Michiko Miyamoto, Country Director of the ILO in Indonesia.
Haiyani underlined the crucial role of women’s representation at the unions to encourage women participation in collective negotiation and agreements; while Michiko highlighted the benefits gained by both employers and workers in non-discriminative working environment.

The interactive discussion was moderated by Vena Annisa, a professional communication practitioner. The event was attended by at least 80 participants who actively participated in the discussion, raising issues on the lack of participation of women in the organization after marriage, traditional norms against women and so forth.