Indonesia rolls out measures to narrow gender pay gap

Manpower Minister Ida Fauziyah said the realisation of equal wages is one of the ways the Indonesian government is protecting women.

“In terms of the norms of laws and regulations, we have removed all forms of discrimination, including in wages,” she said.

“We deploy all of our manpower supervisors spread throughout Indonesia to conduct monitoring in companies that still give different wages to men and women,” Fauziyah said.

Nevertheless, she acknowledged that there are still cases of women workers earning lower wages than men in Indonesia. According to the minister, data from Statistics Indonesia (BPS) showed that the average monthly wage of male workers was Rp2.9 million (US$202) in 2021, while that of female workers was Rp2.3 million (US$160).

In addition, more women work in the informal sector than men. BPS data showed women formed 63.8% of workers in the informal sector, and men the remaining 56.61%.

However, in primary sectors that directly process natural resources such as agriculture and mining, the number of male workers was greater at 32.9% compared to female ones at 27.2%.

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This was the same case in secondary sectors such as manufacturing where the percentage of male workers was 23.66%, while that of female ones was 15.12%. However, in the tertiary sector such as the service industry, there were more female workers (57.68%) than male ones (43.44%), according to Antara News.