INDONESIA: Women and Girl Domestic Workers: A briefing to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women

[18 July 2007] - This briefing to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women focuses on the lack of protection of women and girl domestic workers from gender-based violence and their discrimination in the field of employment, health and education in Indonesia.

While both male and female domestic workers suffer from discrimination, it affects women and girls disproportionately, as women and girls form the overwhelming majority of Indonesia's estimated 2.6 million domestic workers - about 95 per cent. Many of them suffer from economic exploitation and poor working conditions as well as gender-based discrimination. Many are subjected to physical, psychological and sexual violence. Some are even killed. This situation partly results from discriminatory employment legislation and a lack of sufficient state mechanisms to prevent and punish violence against women domestic workers.

In February 2007, Amnesty International issued a report entitled Exploitation and Abuse: the plight of women domestic workers where it highlighted cases of physical, sexual and psychological violence against women and girl domestic workers in Indonesia. Such cases of abuse are under-reported to the police, mirroring a pattern which is prevalent in cases of violence against women in Indonesia, and rarely reach the public eye. Isolated from their family and friends, women domestic workers risk losing their jobs if they
speak out, a risk most of them do not feel in a position to face. Their fear, coupled with the failure of government authorities to protect domestic workers' rights and to prevent, investigate and punish abuses committed against them leaves much of the violence and other abuses perpetrated against such women and girls in the shadows.

Women domestic workers are not protected by current legislation safeguarding workers' rights, in particular the 2003 Manpower Act (No.13/2003, Undang-Undang tentang Ketenagakerjaan). The Manpower Act itself discriminates against domestic workers - virtually all women and girls - and leaves them without legal protection of their workers' rights, such as reasonable limitation on working hours, remuneration adequate to secure a life.

Further information

• Exploitation and Abuse: the plight of women domestic workers (February 2007)
• Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182)
• CRIN's resource page on child labour