GAPKI Encourages Women to Achieve Equality in the Palm Oil Industry
The palm oil industry is striving to realise the principle of equality for female workers, including fair access, employment opportunities, and fulfilment of labour rights without discrimination. This principle of equality in the palm oil industry is implemented by considering aspects specific to women.
Chair of the Human Resource Development Division of the Indonesian Palm Oil Entrepreneurs Association (GAPKI), Sumarjono Saragih, explained that the palm oil industry is working to optimise human resource potential, including that of women. According to him, female workers in the palm oil industry are generally in maintenance and administrative roles that are relatively less physically demanding.
“That opportunities for employment must indeed be equal, but we also have to consider women’s specifics from the aspect of job suitability to women’s physical strength. So, equality does not mean 50:50,” he said in Jakarta on Thursday (26/3/2026).
Sumarjono mentioned that in the upstream sector, women work as harvesters and collectors of loose fruit. Meanwhile, in the downstream sector, women become cooperative members or managers of plasma land.
The Palm Oil Farmers Union (SPKS) stated that around 86 percent of the workforce in the palm oil production process is dominated by women, especially in the early stages of the supply chain. They are heavily involved in activities such as fertilising, weeding, pesticide spraying, to collecting palm oil harvest results.
“Not all job fields are suitable for all genders. During harvesting, it requires stronger physical strength, so usually men are more suitable for that,” Sumarjono said.
Regarding labour protection aspects, Sumarjono said, there is no difference in treatment between male and female workers. He stated that protection and fulfilment of rights are basic rights of every worker that must be given equally regardless of gender.
“Although women have their own specifics related to reproduction such as maternity leave and menstrual leave. But those that are universal rights, rights to social security, rights to safe working conditions, are the same between men and women,” he added.