Equal opportunity employment rights are supposed to be protected by the law in Indonesia, yet institutionalized discrimination still very much exists as many potential employers still create job requirements based on gender.
Among latest to do so, as first touched upon by Tempo, is state-owned train company PT KAI. The train company posted a job ad for machinists, operations and maintenance officers on July 24 (the ad can be seen on their official website here), but point number 2 under “Kriteria Umum Pelamar” (General Criteria for Applicants) states that applicant must be of the male gender (as well as having no tattoos or piercings).
Not long after it was posted, some women took to Twitter to question PT KAI about the discriminatory policy, only to be met with normative answers from the company’s social media admin.
Selamat siang, sementara belum tersedia informasi rekrutmen bagi perempuan. |1
— Kereta Api Indonesia (@KAI121) July 25, 2017
“What about for women please, admin.”
“Good afternoon, as of now, there is no information regarding recruitment for women.”
Selamat siang. Benar, sesuai dengan kriteria umum pelamar hanya dibuka untuk Pria, trims.
— Kereta Api Indonesia (@KAI121) July 24, 2017
“Can’t women take part, admin?”
“Good afternoon. That’s right, in accordance with the general criteria for applicants, the jobs are only for men. Thanks.”
Terkait hal tersebut hingga kini belum tersedia informasinya. Pantau secara berkala melalui https://t.co/BEHJNWeU3Q, trims.
— Kereta Api Indonesia (@KAI121) July 24, 2017
“When will there be (job ads) for women?”
“There is currently no information on that. Please monitor recruitment.kai.id from time to time, thanks.”
The gendered employment policy in this job ad comes not long after PT KAI announced that they had become more progressive in their recruitment efforts. In a written statement picked up by Detik in March, PT KAI said that the reason why men greatly outnumber women (26,765 to 1,293) in their workforce is because many of their jobs are “technical in nature” and “pose a high risk”. That said, they have seen an increase in women taking leadership positions in these so-called high risk and technical departments in PT KAI.
Indonesians are actually guaranteed equal employment opportunity under Article 5 of Law no. 13/2003 of The Workforce Act. However, employment ads asking for applicants only of one specific gender are still common. For example, many ads for office secretary / admin positions not only specify that they are only looking for female application, but also contain appearance-based requirements such as “good looking” or “berbadan proporsional” (have a proportional body). Discriminations based on age and marital status (which affects women more than men) are also common.
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