Ministries asked to recruit more women for high posts
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)