More than 100 participants from various ministries, employers’ and workers organizations as well as training to providers gathered together on 27 January to participate in the virtual Training of Trainers (ToT) on Gender Equality at the Workplace. The ToT was part of the ILO’s Sustaining Competitive and Responsible Enterprises (SCORE)’s latest module focusing on gender training.

“Gender quality is crucial and beneficial for businesses, including micro, small and medium companies. Through this ToT, the ILO’s SCORE programme aims to promote how enterprises can boost their business performances and medium businesses by advancing equal opportunities,” said Januar Rustandie, the National Project Coordinator of the ILO-SCORE Indonesia.

The ToT introduces six spheres in which gender discrimination often occurs in enterprises. Those are equality of voice, inclusive hiring, equal pay, work climate, occupational safety and health and work-life balance. For each sphere, trainers learn about key actions enterprise owners, managers and staff can take to address inequalities.

“We all have conscious and unconscious biases that can lead to discriminate against women or men, or any other group. Our new SCORE training module helps participants to spot inequalities and discrimination. We cannot address what we are not aware of. Thus, I call this “learning to see”. Once we are aware, there are many actions we can take to address inequalities, some of which relate to individual action and some relate to enterprise policies and practices,” said Stephan Ulrich, the ILO-SCORE Regional Programme Manager in his opening remarks.

This participatory ToT is conducted for five days with a duration of three hours per day until the 4th of February. At the end of the ToT, the participants are expected to replicate the training with enterprises in their communities, reaching several hundred businesses in 2021.

“We hope that the participants can replicate and continue conducting a similar training for local enterprises in their communities. We also hope that the results of the ToT will be snowballing and, as a result, more and more enterprises will have stronger gender awareness and promote equality at the workplace,” concluded Januar.