Over the last few decades, the Indonesian economy and labor market has changed significantly There is less reliance on agriculture, with the economy moving to other sectors, such as manufacturing and services While this has led to a change in the labor market over the past 25 years, there has been virtually no change in Indonesia’s female labor force participation (LFP), with a participation rate of 51 per cent. Female labor force participation is significantly lower than men‘s in Indonesia and low relative to countries at a comparable stage of development. This reflects gender differences in family roles, childrearing and also cultural norms about women‘s role. Although women‘s labor force participation rates are lower than men’s. they also experience higher levels of unemployment and underemployment. Women are overrepresented in the informal sector and more likely to be unpaid workers.
Cultural norms also play a role in the strong gender segregation of industries and occupations. with women being concentrated in lower paying roles. Indonesia has a large gender wage gap with women being paid around 30 % less than a similarly qualified man. Culturally and religiously. it was naturally accepted and believed that the ‘ideal Indonesian woman’ is an expert in domestic roles such as raising children and catering to her husband‘s needs. The patriarchal/cultural norms and gender ideology promoted by the state has predictably led to gender discrimination in the education and economic sector (Dzuhayatin, Munawar—Rachman, Umar. “Working women are viewed as providing additional income in the family so they are paid less than men. It should not be like that. The appraisement is supposed to lie on the capability of the workers,“ Arimbi said, “In Indonesia, there is a View that says certainjobs are for women, and certain jobs are for men.
The needlework is for women while alljobs that are technical- related are more appropriate for men. The same thing also happens in the education sector.” Teaching approaches and methods used to teach, engage and assess students, may also favor boys, particularly in Indonesia where girls are often discouraged from speaking in public, expressing their opinions or questioning male author. The first solution is teacher development for gender equality, means equipping teachers with an understanding of the nature of gender inequality in classrooms, the wider school environment and society in general. It entails ensuring that teachers have the ability to promote this understanding in classrooms and can develop strategies and practical solutions to overcome the barriers to learning that boys and girls face.
The second solution is to implement specific policies to promote gender equality in education providing equal access for all boys and girls to quality and gender-sensitive education; reducing the illiteracy rate of the adult population 7 specifically the female population 7 through enhancing performance at all educational levels in formal and non-formal education, as well as in equivalency education and functional literacy programs and building the capacity of educational institutions in managing and promoting gender-sensitive education. The third solution is considers gender mainstreaming a key strategy in achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment in Indonesia, it offers a pluralistic approach that values the diversity among both men and women Furthermore it involves ensuring that gender perspectives and attention to the goal of gender equality are central to all activities – policy development, research, advocacy, dialogue, legislation, resource allocation, planning, and budgeting implementation and monitoring of programs and projects.
To evaluate the effectiveness and workability of the three solutions proposed, 1 suggests examining them firstly in practical terms. Although the first solution is effective when it is integrated into both the preeservice and inrservice training programs. There are clearly practical difficulties To deliver this training, teacher training institutions and networks need adequate capacity in teaching active learning pedagogy that is applied with a gender equality perspective in both training development and in the skills and knowledge of teacher trainers delivering the material. The second solution is in fact relatively hard to complied, this is due to a result ofa deeper-rooted problem of inadequate contextualization of gender concepts in a way that makes sense within existing Indonesian socio- cultural and religious beliefs and traditions. Moreover, the third solution has the potential to create far deeper forms of change, precisely because it sits at the center and not the periphery.
But because gender mainstreaming is a strategy rather than a program, it cannot be separated from the practice of development. And so as long as bureaucrats continue to think that ‘gender’ means ‘women‘, gender mainstreaming will remain little more than rhetoric. To conclude good practice and innovation in gender equality in education exists, both in Indonesia, and internationally. However, in Indonesia, opportunities are missed because such practice remains largely localized and relatively small scale, often through limited pilot projects, which seldom move to scale. A key challenge is therefore to evaluate and disseminate good practice and to prioritize resources and budgets to scale up initiatives that will make a difference.
