9 - Deconstructing care work in Indonesia

Summary

Women’s participation in the economy has been considered one of the key strategies for achieving gender equality. The reasoning is that by entering the labour market or earning their own money, women will achieve wider opportunities, such as to participate in public life, improve their personal wellbeing, improve their family’s welfare, contribute to the country’s economic development, and have their capability in professional and public works recognised. In the past two decades in Indonesia, women’s labour force participation has slowly but steadily increased. However, this trend has not changed the gendered role of care work at home. Social norms continue to prevail: that care work is women’s natural role and family duty. This chapter explores how women are encouraged to participate in the economy, while at the same time still expected to fulfil their duty in care work in the family. I also analyse that care work has been underappreciated, which is reflected in the marginalisation of paid care work in the domestic worker profession.

Backdrop: The progress of gender equality in economic participation in Indonesia

Since the 1970s, Indonesia has witnessed improving indicators of women’s economic participation. A rapid decline in the fertility rate after the implementation of government-led family planning during the New Order era and increase in educational attainment has resulted in better economic opportunities for women. More women have post-secondary education, and more women in each recent cohort have been working, particularly during the early years after completing school (Dong and Merdikawati, this volume).

Over the past few decades, the female labour force participation rate in Indonesia has remained low, at around 52% in 2019, and still relatively low compared to the East Asia and Pacific region, Thailand and China (all more than 60%) and Vietnam and Cambodia (both nearly 80%) (World Bank 2020: 16). Women’s contribution to household income has, at the same time, increased slowly (Table 9.1). However, whether women’s increased financial contribution to family livelihoods has also contributed to gender equality in the family is unclear. This is because, while women continue to pursue participation in the economy, they also continue to bear the burden of domestic work in the household.

Indonesia’s National Medium Term Development Plan (Rencana Pembangunan Jangka Menengah Nasional, RPJMN) 2020–2024 has set a key development agenda ‘to increase the quality and competitiveness of human resources’.