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.