Women in Leadership in Indonesia

• In Event: Current Perspectives on Asian Women in Leadership

Short Description

This presentation will illustrate Indonesia’s complicated gender disparity, where a culture of paternalistic conservatism coexists with having the sixth highest proportion of women senior managers in the world. A historical and cultural analysis will be employed to elucidate the factors behind this complexity.

Detailed Abstract

There have been significant improvements of women in leadership in Indonesia, especially in big cities. The Global Gender Gap Report 2015 reports that Indonesia moved up five in the rankings for gender improvement from 97 to 92 out of 142 countries, due to doubling the number of women in ministerial positions (World Economic Forum, 2015). Grant Thornton’s research also shows that 36% of senior managers in Indonesia are women (Priherdityo, 2015). Thus, quantity-wise, Indonesia has the 6th highest number of female senior managers worldwide (Priherdityo, 2016). However, with a score of 0.681 for overall gender equality in 2015, with 1 being the perfect gender equality (World Economic Forum, 2015), there is still major work to be done. The Asian Development Bank reports that in 2014 women’s wages in Indonesia were 30.8% lower than men’s, with urban areas having a wider wage gap than rural areas and gender discrimination being the key component of the wage gap (Taniguchi & Tuwo, 2014).

Cultural analysis reveals that, while collectivistic culture (Hofstede, Hofstede, & Minkov, 2010) potentially serves as enablers in motivating people to bring betterment to society, its function is limited by traditional culture (Ingelhart & Welzel, 2005) that puts family as the basis of people’s activity and thus constraints women’s attention to the family. Female progress is also limited by a culture that emphasizes high power distance (Hofstede, et al., 2010) and non-egalitarian sex-roles. The extent to which culture shapes women leaders in Indonesia is impacted by the family, as the core that defines people’s identity. It is apparent that women’s families are the ones who determine the subject of women’s focus - whether the women will focus only on their families, or whether they will pay attention to leaving their marks on their community. Although education is a source of empowerment, it seems that its function is shaped by family values.

Historical analysis reveals that before independence, women gained access to leadership and education through their family (especially, their fathers) and some women achieved respectable positions as leaders. However, during Soeharto’s era (the New Order regime, 1967-1998 CE), non-egalitarian gender roles were specifically strengthened. This effort occurred through a new manner to refer to each other, and especially a new way to refer to women (Budiman, 2002), and a government initiative for all wives of civil servants (Suryakusuma, 2002) that highly encouraged non-egalitarian sex-roles that resulted in disparity between the status of men and women, inhibiting women’s empowerment.

Because of the importance of family, especially fathers, to the progress of women leaders in Indonesia, I will suggest a national movement to educate and motivate fathers to see the potentials of their daughters. I will also discuss several organizational strategies to encourage women leaders in Indonesia, including the essential for organizations to define themselves as diverse organizations and, thus, to establish policies and practices to enable women in their organizations to grow as leaders.

Participant

• Corina D. Riantoputra, Universitas Indonesia