Women still battling to get ahead in workplace

Women still battling to get ahead in workplace

Hera Diani and Bruce Emond, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The glass ceiling has been cracked but it's still far from being
shattered: Although the workplace is more gender-friendly than it
once was, examples of women CEOs like president director of
Indofood Eva Rianti Hutapea and PT IBM Indonesia's president
Betti Setiastuti Alisjahbana are still relatively uncommon.

Women, many of them stuck in "traditional" jobs of the
secretarial pool or as assistants, are still having to learn how
to navigate their way through the "boys' club".

So when "Dita" heard that the only top woman manager in her
office had been forced to resign, she sensed discrimination.

"They said she didn't perform well, which is questionable
because professionally, she's a hard worker and very
professional. Compared to her male counterparts, she was doing a
better job.

"Maybe she was too tough at times and made some misjudgment
sometimes, but who doesn't?" said the middle-management staff in
a private company.

At the heart of her dismissal, she felt, was that the woman
had been deemed too strident and supercritical for her
colleagues, the archetypal "bitch". She wondered if a man acting
the same way would be regarded as hard and demanding, but the
reaction would be accepting ("he's a man, after all"), not
condemning.

She points out that much of the criticism of women in the
workplace is personal, based on how they look or dress, not about
their competency for their job. If they do make it to the top,
they are often dismissed as riding their family's coattails to
the top, or sleeping their way there.

"Educated people tend to deny the occurrence of discrimination
against women in the workplace. But the fact is that
discrimination remains. Men still can't accept women as their
leader, or being in a higher position than them," Dita asserted.

"If they (women) make it to the top, they are considered
overly ambitious, a poor mother, that they must be a lesbian,
whatever. Worse still, they are considered as having used their
femininity to reach the position," Dita said.

According to Eileen Rachman, director of executive performance
development firm Experd, the stigmatization of women using their
sexuality to get ahead persists.

"It's not that easy to merely use sexuality to reach a high
position. That's a myth. Women executives who I know really
perform very well in their jobs," she told The Jakarta Post.

Sociologist and women's rights activist Mayling Oey-Gardiner
said that men are still threatened by women reaching top
positions.

"Quantity-wise, statistically there are still more men in the
workplace. As top positions are limited, men feel threatened by
women so they conspire against women," Mayling said.

Stereotyping women as "emotional" -- with the implicit
understanding that this tag means she will be prone to fly off
the handle, be irrational and find it difficult to remain
impartial in her judgements -- is used to keep them out of
managerial positions.

A similar reason is that women will not be able to meet their
professional obligations because of family commitments.

Men may be the ones orchestrating the effort to keep "uppity"
women in their "place", but other women sometimes become allies
in tearing them down.

"There has been the growing belief that the ones who should be
blamed are women. It's like the stereotype that women like to
gossip, while men do it as well. But when men gossip, they call
it business. It's unfair. Eventually, women also believe that
it's true," Mayling said.

Meisye, a 36-year-old private company secretary, holds to the
belief that women are more emotional, but that it should not
fstop them from making their way up the corporate ladder.

"There is no denying that we are more emotional, but being a
manager means controlling those emotions in the workplace," she
said.

"There is nothing to stop women from doing that ... But, of
course, people prefer to work with someone who is at least semi-
competent and friendly over someone who is bright, highly
competent but cannot mix well with them."

Such views irk "Ira", a 26-year-old media worker.

"Women aren't more emotional, that's used by men to keep us
down," she said angrily. "I know many male managers who are just
as emotional if not more so (than women colleagues), but it's not
a trait that is ascribed to men."

The battle to have quotas established for women in the
government unleashed its own hornet's net of controversy, with
male legislators rejecting the measure as unnecessary.

After all, goes the facile argument, this country is led by a
woman.

"Research shows that corruption will decline when more women
are given such positions. Therefore, men feel threatened because
they're afraid of losing their positions," Mayling said.

Eileen said there would be no opportunity for sexism when
companies had clearly defined corporate culture and measurement
of performance and competency.

However, policies in most companies, and also the law on
labor, do not benefit women.

Working women are not considered the breadwinners, therefore,
they are not given the family or dependent's allowance.

"I'm single, but I have my mother and my siblings as my
dependents. However, the company won't consider that," said
"Wati", a 40-something manager in a private company.

The labor law allows for women to take two days off every
month when they menstruate. In most cases, however, women are
reluctant to take it for fear of being called unprofessional.

Some women may strive to measure up to men in every way,
afraid of being labeled with the "emotional" stereotype, but then
running the risk of being called "masculine".

"For women, good is never enough as they have to be excellent
to be recognized in the workplace," Dita's manager once said.

Perhaps she forgot to add that they also need to be careful of
all the obstacles lying on that difficult road to success.