Ministries asked to recruit more women for high posts

JAKARTA (JP): After nine months in office the State Minister for the Empowerment of Women is gaining insight into why her earlier appeals for ministries to recruit more women in high positions has not met with results.

Khofifah Indar Parawansa told The Jakarta Post Friday, "When the ministries send their people to be educated for higher positions, they are inclined to send men."

Khofifah, who had attended a ministry meeting here, said she had sent letters to ministries to include at least 30 percent women among their employees sent for further education.

"There is an embryo for (women) policy makers in their respective ministries," she said.

In her first weeks in office Khofifah said that empowerment of women required recruiting more women in decision making positions.

The state ministry has drawn up a draft for a presidential instruction on gender mainstreaming in every ministry to be integrated into various development programs.

Among others, the instruction will compel ministries to provide a 30 percent quota for decision making positions to women.

Civil servants have to undergo additional education by the National Institute of Administration (LAN) before they can hold higher ranking positions.

"It turned out that LAN only (trains) people recommended by ministries," Khofifah said.

A ministry official, Abdul Azis Hoesein, earlier said a reason why mostly men were sent for further education was the view that higher positions would conflict with the role of women as mothers and wives.

Statistics from 1998 show that women holding the IV/D rank or echelon II, numbered 267 compared to 2,839 men, and those holding the highest rank IV/E or echelon I numbered only 83 against 1,093 men in the position.

Last week women's rights activist Nursyahbani Katjasungkana stressed that giving women a quota for further education was not a way to privilege women over men.

"To achieve equality, men and women have to set off on the same footing first," the member of the People's Consultative Assembly told the Post after addressing a seminar on women.

For that purpose, affirmative actions like setting a quota for women civil servants are needed, Nursyahbani added.

The United Nations' Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women states that "the adoption of temporary special measures aimed at accelerating de facto equality between men and women shall not be considered discrimination."

It adds that the measures should be discontinued when the objectives have been achieved.

The government ratified the convention in 1980 and agreed to adhere to it through law no. 4/1984, on which the above drafted presidential instruction on gender mainstreaming is based. (10)