Background

The ILO Women in Leadership, Access to Employment and Decent Work Project supports women to access employment opportunities in the formal economy and aims to strengthen equality in employment and women’s working conditions. This will be achieved through a combination of upstream and downstream support, involving institution building; policy advice to strengthen national laws, policies and programmes; social dialogue, advocacy and knowledge sharing and experimental pilot programs. The pilot programs are formulated in partnership with the Government, private sector and civil society and, where possible, build on existing initiatives and programs with the aim to strengthen women’s economic empowerment and address barriers to employment and decent work.

As part of the advocacy and awareness-raising strategy, and also to support greater policy debate and the development of reform initiatives, it is important that the media are aware of issues of discrimination in employment against women, are equipped to effectively report on these issues and to generate news stories to cover challenges affecting women’s employment opportunities. The Project will therefore hold an initial media training workshop to raise awareness on gender issues in employment, and barriers to women’s access to employment and to support the media to more effectively report on these issues. The training will particularly focus on pay equity and sexual harassment, two areas in which the national government is making concerted efforts to address through the formulation and issuance of national guidelines, training and awareness-raising activities.

Components of Media Training

The media training shall involve the following elements:

• Presenting research results on the situation of women in employment in Indonesia and barriers to women’s access to employment;
• Overview of key ILO and UN human rights instruments and principles of equality in employment;
• Pay equity (concepts of equal pay for work of equal value) and the Government’s new pay equity guidelines;
• Challenges of home workers and investigative journalism to uncover outputting systems;
• Protection versus empowerment of women – how the media can strengthen the position of women;
• Reporting on sexual harassment;
• Reporting on gender issues in employment and difficult industrial relations environments;
• Developing news stories on women’s equality in employment; and
• Introduction to media fellowship program to support gender-equality reporting.

Objective

The overall objective of the media training is to equip journalists and reporters with a better understanding of gender equality issues in employment and to assist them in developing and producing media reports related to such issues in the media in an ethical and professional manner.

The immediate objectives of the media training are to:

• Strengthen the awareness and understanding of the media of gender equality issues in employment (particularly issues relating to pay equality, substantive equality; protection vs empowerment of women in employment; home workers, and sexual harassment);
• Strengthen the ability of the media to report on gender equality issues in employment in an unbiased and ethical manner;
• Strengthen the ability of the media to investigate and develop reports and news stories on gender equality and women’s issues in employment; and
• Support the media to develop and publish reports on gender inequality and women’s issues in employment through the introduction of a fellowship program.