Page 17 - e-KLIPING KETENAGAKERJAAN 21 SEPTEMBER 2020

RI WOMEN EARN 23% LESS THAN THEIR MALE PEERS

Women in Indonesia earn less money on average per month than men as the gender pay gap
stood at nearly 23 percent in February, official data has shown, as female workers face
undervalued work and inflexible working conditions.

Women eamed on average Rp 2.45 million (US$166.39) per month in Febmary marking an an-
nual increase of 5 percent, accord-ing to survey data from Statistics Indonesia (BPS). Men eamed
high-er on'average at Rp 3.18 roillion per month, an increase of 4.3 percent over the same
period.

The inequality has slightly nar-rowed as the gender pay gap, the difference between the average
wages of men and those of women as a percentage of men's wages, was slightly higher at 23.44
percent i n the same month last year. However, the wage gap has not improved very much from
the level seen in February 2010 at 23.64 percent.

The gender pay gap was esti-mated at 16 percent at the global level, 'according to a news release
from the International Labor Or-ganization (ILO) and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equal-
ity and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women).

"Unless we address the systemic inequalities that put women in low paid, undervalued work and
inflex-ible working conditions that limit their opportunities, we will not be able to close the gender
pay gap," Jamshed Kazi, UN Women Indonesia representative and liaison to ASEAN, was quoted
in the news release assayingon Thursday.

The wage disparity exacer-bates the uneven impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women, since
most of them work in hard-hit industries such as accommo-dation, food and beverages, sales
and manufacturing;

Women have also been dispro-portionately affected as most of them work in the informal and
underpaid sectors. Less than half of them work as professionals, according' to an estimate from
the FinanceMinistry.

While other factors like educa-tional background mayplay a role, most studies consider discrimi-
nation the stronger factor driving the wage inequality between men and women, Diahhadi
Setyonaluri, an economist at the Demo-graphic Ifistitute at the University of Indonesia (UI), has
said.

Men had a better chance of climbing the career ladder in part because there were "implicit
problems" embedded in job pro-motion, Diahhadi added.

Women, for example, tended to tum down promotion offers that would move them from their
cur-rent city when their children were already attending school and their husband worked there,
she said.

"Imagine if there was zero gender wage gap, there would be ad-ditional income," Diahhadi told
The Jakarta Post in a phone inter-viewon Friday.

"The easiest way to see it is to consider its impact on the national income or economic growth.
With no wage inequality, our economic growth may increase by several percentage points."

The ILO Indonesia stated that "education alone does not close the gender pay gap". Among
university graduates, women earned 31.9 percent less than their male counter-parts, according
to BPS data.

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