Jakarta, IO – The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, also known as UN Women, places the quality of women’s empowerment in Indonesia at rank 87 out of 146 countries in the world.
This figure is based on the Global Gender Gap Report from the World Economic Forum. UN Women Indonesia Country Representative and Liaison to Asean, Jamshed Kazi, said the assessment was based on a number of factors, per Katadata, Tue (12/3).
“The ranking is based on a number of factors, such as educational attainment, health and survival, economic empowerment and also political participation,” Kazi said.
He explained that Indonesia actually has quite good performance in educational attainment. However, what remains a challenge is women in economic and political spheres.
In the aspect of economic empowerment, female labor force participation in Indonesia is only around 53 to 54 percent, and this has not changed much in the last 20 years.
In line with this, women’s political participation in Indonesia is also still low. Women’s involvement in parliament is only around 22 percent compared to the global average of 26 percent.
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Nevertheless, Kazi believes that this is still positive because the rate of involvement in politics tends to increase from year to year, although there remains a gap in participation between regions in Java and outside Java.
“In Indonesia, it is very important to ensure that we don’t leave anyone behind,” said Kazi. (un)