Strong economic growth in East Asia and the Pacific over the past few decades has expanded opportunities for women across the region. The World Bank has been actively supporting efforts to create jobs and improve livelihoods. In celebration of this year’s International Women’s Day, the Care Economy in Indonesia report is featured in an immersive story highlighting how investments in the availability, affordability, and quality of care services can enhance women’s employment prospects. 

Our analysis shows the entry into employment among females is primarily driven by workers with less than a high-school education, residing in rural areas, and working as casual workers or unpaid family workers in the agriculture sector. 

In the last 20 years, Indonesia’s female labor force participation rates are relatively low and have remained unchanged. Learn how Indonesia would benefit from greater public expenditure on childcare services.

Many girls still need to be assured that having a successful career does not preclude the possibility of also having a family and being a good mother and that their choices will be supported by their partners, parents, and communities

The PEKKA Foundation, together with the Embassy of Japan in Indonesia, formally launched the Indonesia Community-Based Childcare and Women’s Empowerment Project. This initiative is supported by funding from the Japan Social Development Fund (JSDF) and the Early Learning Partnership (ELP) multi-donor trust fund from the World Bank. The policy dialogue explored the current landscape of community-based childcare and women’s empowerment activities in Indonesia. Discussions centered on equitable care economic policies and the development of a community-based childcare ecosystem to promote justice and equality for Indonesian families.  

On March 5, in celebration of the International Women's Day, this special edition highlighted and celebrated inspiring projects and teams for their outstanding achievements in breaking down barriers and creating pathways for women to access finance, skills, and economic opportunities. Among 111 nominations, The Care Economy Engagement in Indonesia was recognized for its holistic, multi-sectoral approach to supporting childcare, parental leave reforms, and women's economic empowerment. 

The World Bank has completed a new report “The Care Economy in Indonesia: A Pathway for Women’s Economic Participation and Social Wellbeing”, which provides a comprehensive assessment of the care ecosystem, with a focus on childcare. The report launch event discuss important issues related to the report’s findings and recommendations, public discourse on the work-care nexus, and current GoI’s policies and programs on care economy.

Investing in and valuing unpaid care work is key to creating a fairer, more supportive work environment and unlocking women’s full potential. The national consultation serves as a critical platform for multi-stakeholder dialogue to discuss priorities and strategies on the best ways forward on the Indonesian Care Economy Roadmap and National Action Plan. The event is organized by the Ministry of Women Empowerment and Child Protection of Indonesia, United Nations ESCAP, The World Bank, and UN Women.

In order to support the Government of Indonesia close key gender gaps for greater economic growth, the project initiated engagement and outreach activities. The first series is taking part in celebrating International Women’s Day 2022 and brings together respected female figures across various fields and sectors to discuss topical issues relating to gender equality, including women in leadership.

In this second series, Indonesian Minister of Manpower Ida Fauziyah provides a keynote speech. The event continued with a panel discussion of women leaders to explore their leadership journeys and the various pathways they have undertaken to overcome existing societal and workforce barriers. In partnership with SWA Media, this webinar will foster a dialogue on how the next generation of women can have a brighter future through better policies that actively encourage the participation and leadership of women in the workforce.

As an official G20 Women Empowerment side-event of the Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection (MoWECP), this webinar convenes multi-sectoral leaders across the public, private, development partners, and civil society spheres to discuss how institutional policies, such as childcare provision, can enhance female labor force participation rate and address existing constraints for women’s economic pursuits.

Watch our Webinar, which will discuss implementing inclusive workplace policies in supporting increased female labor force participation.

The webinar on International Women's Day (IWD) is collaborating with Women's World Banking and presented leaders from the government, private sector, development partners, and the community to discuss digitalization to encourage the growth of women's businesses.

The success of Indonesia’s efforts to strengthen its care economy depends on the extent to which different elements of the care ecosystem work together. This includes, but goes beyond, improvements to the ECED or PAUD system.

This paper looks at the influence of social norms that drive behavior with women’s participation in employment.

This policy note summarizes the findings of an online survey that sought to measure the extent of support for women with children working outside the home for pay.

This report reviews the current status of gender equality and women’s issues in Indonesia. It provides an evidence base for the Indonesian Government on specific actions and priority responses needed to close gender gaps to drive the country's growth and human capital potential.

Investments that unlock women’s employment and support human capital attainment can bring additional growth gains to Indonesia. Current rates of female labor force participation in Indonesia are relatively low by regional standards and have remained largely stagnant for two decades. Indonesia’s uneven childcare provision for early years misses an opportunity to bring a double dividend of growth through higher levels of female labor force participation, as well as boosting long term human capital. This policy note estimates the impacts of increased public expenditure on childcare services to the Indonesian economy.

The Indonesia Economic Prospects (IEP) is a bi-annual World Bank report that assesses recent macroeconomic developments, outlook and risks, as well as specific development challenges for the Indonesian economy. In doing so, the IEP aims to inform the public policy debate and is geared towards a wide audience, including the general public, the government, the private sector, civil society organizations, and other domestic and international stakeholders.

This paper studies the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on Indonesia’s labor market by exploiting the exogeneous timing of the pandemic in a seasonal difference-in-differences framework. The analysis uses multiple rounds of Indonesia’s National Labor Force Survey from 2016 to 2020 to establish a pre-pandemic employment trend and then attribute any excess difference in employment outcomes from this trend as the estimated effect of the pandemic on individual employment outcomes. The results suggest that the pandemic has had mixed effects on the Indonesian labor market. While the pandemic has narrowed the gender gaps in employment participation through the “added worker effect” among women, it has also lowered the overall employment quality among both gender groups.

Childcare services enable women who were previously unable to work due to taking care of their children to join the labor market. If some women are more productive in market work, rather than unpaid household work, the availability of childcare can potentially improve the allocation of talent across different occupations, triggering an increase in productivity. This paper tests this hypothesis using a survey of manufacturing plants and data on preschool expansion in Indonesia. The analysis relies on a triple difference estimation comparing plants in sectors with different degrees of female labor at baseline.

While a large body of literature has documented positive impacts of institutional childcare on maternal labor supply, thinner evidence is available on whether childcare can also nudge women into better jobs in developing countries. We evaluate the impact of public preschool expansion in Indonesia on women’s labor supply and characteristics linked to the quality of their employment, including employment types, earnings, and hours. The findings are likely explained by the modality of preschools in Indonesia: operating for only 3 hours per day, they are unlikely to enable women to secure a paid job outside the home with longer time commitments.

Maternal work may affect children positively through increased household income, higher control of mothers over available income, and expansion of maternal information networks through work contacts and greater decision-making power of mothers as they become more economically empowered. However, maternal work may reduce maternal time spent with children. If maternal time is not substituted for time of equal quality by other caregivers, children’s development may be penalized. Stress associated with work may also decrease the quality of parenting. This review summarizes causal evidence on the relationship between maternal work and children’s development. The majority causal studies find positive or 0 impacts of maternal work on children’s development.

How can Indonesian women remain productive and actively engaged in work while raising young children? What support systems do women and families need to ensure quality childcare? Watch our podcast to learn more.

Investments are needed across the entire care ecosystem to facilitate women’s entry and retention in the labor force, while improving the wellbeing of children and families.

Sri Mulyani, Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Indonesia, made an analogy that the left shoe must be the same as the right shoe, such as the equality of women and men so that life can run harmoniously.

Satu Kahkonen explains how to increase the number of women workers and leaders.

At the World Bank Women in Leadership webinar, Australian Ambassador Penny Williams emphasized the importance of men's involvement in women's empowerment efforts since men are part of the solution.