Campaign with Workers’ Organizations: Promoting Gender Equality, Non-Discrimination and Inclusiveness in the Workplaces

Background

Over the past decades, Indonesia has progressed towards gender equality. In fact, gender gaps in the access to education narrowed and more women benefit from university education than men do. Indonesia has also strengthened the regulatory framework on gender equality and ratified the Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention, 1958 (No. 111). However, the gender parity in education and strengthened anti-discrimination regulations have not yet resulted in gender equality and inclusiveness in the labour market. In fact, gender pay gaps and a thick glass ceiling persist. Further, disadvantaged groups of people such as workers with disabilities and people living with HIV continue to face difficulties in finding suitable employment.

The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected the Indonesian economy, labour market and livelihood of people. Unfortunately, some of the past gains in socio-economic improvement have been compromised due to the pandemic. Indeed, inequalities, discrimination and exclusion in the labour market appear to have worsened. While the government swiftly responded to the pandemic, consequences of the economic downturn are felt disproportionally by disadvantaged groups of people as they have limited means of coping with difficulties.

Employers and workers can play a critical role in making Indonesian workplaces gender equal and inclusive. In this light, a new UN project “Employment and Livelihood: An Inclusive Approach to Economic Empowerment of Women & Vulnerable Populations in Indonesia” intends to organize a series of webinars to raise awareness of human resource managers and conduct awareness raising campaigns of workers in collaboration with tripartite constituents of the ILO. The project is funded by with the UN Multi-Partner Trust Funds (UN MPTF). Four UN agencies, International Labour Organization (ILO), UN Development Programme (UNDP), Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), and UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) implement the project.

Against this backdrop, the project proposes awareness raising campaigns for gender equality, non-discrimination and inclusiveness in collaboration with like-minded workers’ organizations. The campaign informs workers on these issues so they can voice against malpractices and safeguard a fair workplace.

Methods

In the campaign, the organisations:

1. Nominated campaigners and submitted a list of nominees with the following criteria:
   • Interested in gender equality, inclusion, and/or other social issues;
   • Active social media users of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and/or Tiktok
   • Tech-savvy (i.e. being able to create and/or edit content);
   • Communicative and willing to open dialog with their colleagues about gender equality, non-discrimination and inclusion in the workplace.
     
2. Released training allowance to the campaigners upon their completion of the one-day training on 11 August 2021. The training consisted of four sessions (2 sessions in the morning and 2 in the afternoon). If they miss training sessions, an amount will be deducted from the allowance per session they miss.
3. Campaigners submitted 20 social media postings, as well as a report (a summary of key issues discussed, 1-2 pages in Bahasa Indonesia), a list of participants (ILO provides the template), and photos of the meeting (screenshots of participants in case of an online meeting). The organisation verified the submitted documents and confirm successful completion of the campaign and released campaign allowance to the campaigners who completed the tasks. For campaigners that did not complete the task, they will be paid for each post they made and if they conducted the workplace meeting.
4. Joined the final webinar in November, report key achievements of campaigners and share good practices
5. Submitted the following to the ILO: signed receipts of allowances (training and campaign allowances); social media postings; reports, lists of participants, and photos/screenshots of meeting.

Under this Agreement, the ILO transferred to each organization: training allowance, campaign allowance, and coordination, administration, and management fee.

Participating Organisations and Results

1. KSPSI – Reconciliation
   
   The campaign with KSPSI – Reconciliation did not go quite well. For the social media campaign, only one person who completed all the 20 social media post (Tri Ruswati, with 29 social media posts). In total KSPSI – Reconciliation produced 111 posts with 2730 likes, 488 comments, and 215 shares. The rest of the campaigners only made 5-12 social media post. On average, each person got 28 likes, 5 comments, and 2 shares on their social media.
   
   
   For the workplace meeting, seems like from the beginning they only selected the campaigners among their colleagues from the same company (PT Spinmill Indah Industry). It helped them to arrange the meeting, but consequently the number of beneficiaries that each worker had to achieve is less than expected. They also participated in the meeting conducted by BPJS due to no financial support from ILO for the meeting attendees. The workplace meetings were attended by 106 people (34 men, 72 women). In the workplace meeting, the topics of gender equality and sexual harassment in the workplace were the topics that widely discussed.
   
   
   From the workplace meeting, the participants decided to continue doing the campaign, conduct regular meeting and capacity building for the members, advancing the roles of workers union to prevent and response to sexual violence and abuse in the workplace, push the Indonesian government to ratify C190, and to keep informing Indonesian migrant workers and the candidates on the safety and security of working abroad.
   
   
2. SBMI
   
   Generally, campaigners from SBMI are very tech savvy and popular on Facebook. All 7 campaigners completed the campaign. They have 1,505 shares on Facebook in total. Campaigners from SBMI are spread within Indonesia and abroad. They discussed about the condition related to migrant workers. Topics raised in the discussions are about discrimination they are facing when they work abroad, disability rights, HIV, gender equality, decent work, domestic workers, sexual violence and abuse, ILO C189 and C190, and how to work abroad safely.
   
   
   From the meeting, they plan to conduct regular discussion. Also, since many of them are migrant workers, they want to keep informing people on how to work abroad safely, to establish reporting system in the organization for migrant workers who have problems related to their works, and to promote SBMI’s SOP to refer workers’ report. In general, they found the campaign very helpful, and they want to keep campaigning the issues even though the ILO project has ended.
   
   
3. IKAGI
   
   The campaign with IKAGI went okay. IKAGI had 8 campaigners but only 6 of them did the campaign. For the social media posts, they produced 97 social media post through facebook, Instagram, twitter, and youtube with 20 shares. They incorporated the campaign with the nature of their works as flight attendants, cabin crews, airport workers who experience issues related to gender equality, inclusion, and discrimination.
   
   
   In the workplace meetings, they discussed about sexual harassment and abuse in the workplace, HIV in the workplace, migrant workers, and workers with disability. The participants were very enthusiast in discussing about sexual harassment and abuse in the workplace because they found it relatable with their works. For the HIV in the workplace and workers with disability topics and ILO C-190, those are new topics to the participants. Therefore, they got new information. They also shared the training materials to the participants, so the participants can share them to more people in their organisations.
   
   
   After the meeting, they plan to keep campaigning about sexual harassment and abuse in the workplace. Following up the workplace meeting, to celebrate World’s AIDS Day, IKAGI conducts a poster competition on HIV information. Besides, they also conducted activity at the terminal 3 Soekarno-Hatta International Airport on World’s AIDS Day. They shared information on HIV to visitors, security workers, and other workers at the airport.
   
   
4. KSPI
   
   In the beginning, KSPI nominated 9 people to be the campaigners. In the implementation, only 6 people did the campaign. From those 6 campaigners, only 3 people who did workplace meeting. For the social media post, they produced 132 social media post through facebook, Instagram, twitter, and youtube with 67 shares.
   
   
   The workplace meetings were attended by 128 people in total. In the meeting they discussed about maternity protection (ILO C183), violence and abuse in the workplace (ILO C190) and promoting gender equality. The participants were very enthusiast about the topics raised in the meeting. They asked many questions.
   
   
   From the meeting, the participants planned to have regular meeting among the members. The meetings were seen as beneficial for the members’ capacity building. They also plan to campaign C183 and C190, to have bipartite dialogue with the companies’ management.
   
   
5. KSBSI
   
   KSBSI nominated 9 people to be the campaigners but only 8 people did the campaign. For the social media campaign, they produced 162 social media post through Facebook, Instagram, twitter, and youtube with 100 shares.
   
   
   The workplace meetings were attended by 225 people in total. In the workplace meeting, KSBSI members spread information on the difference of sex and gender, why gender equality matters, what is diversity and inclusion, HIV, sexual abuse and violence in the workplace, bullying, as well as sharing about C-ILO 190.
   
   
   From the meeting, they committed to communicate to their respective organization to have regular meeting, to create a reporting centre, to apply internal mechanism to stop violence in the workplace. The meeting is useful not only to share information, but also to strengthen the engagement among the workers and organization members.
   
   
6. AJI
   
   The campaigners from AJI were all journalists. The campaign went well with AJI. From 8 campaigners, one person withdrawn his participation from the campaign. In total, the campaigners from AJI made 239 posts with 35 shares. The workplace meetings involved 277 people.
   
   
   The workplace meeting mostly discussed about gender equality and sexual harassment in the workplace, violence and discrimination faced by female journalists, omnibus law, the condition of journalists during pandemic, intimidation against journalists, the raise of minimum wage, promoting the establishment of workers’ union (journalists) in Bangka Belitung.
   
   
   In conducting the workplace meeting, Khairiyah Fitri, one of the campaigners, collaborated with local organisations (Ruma Beta and LP2B) because those organisations focus on gender and labour. Ruma Beta is an institution that assists and advocates for HIV survivors, while LP2B assists and advocates for young victims of drug abuse in Ambon. The participants were not only survivors, but also several journalists. The journalists may be the victims of misunderstanding and misinformation, and the perpetrators in framing discriminatory news content and ultimately consumed by the public. Therefore, she did the meeting to educate her fellow journalists too to be more emphatic in producing the news.
   
   
   Another journalist in Jember, Rere, shared that the ILO campaign inspires her to do the same in Jember. Using ILO training materials as the reference, she trained her fellow journalists in some training on gender equality and disability rights.
   
   From the workplace meetings, the participants agreed to do some follow up actions:
   • To have more meetings to advocate the establishment of journalist union in Bangka Belitung.
   • To collaborate with other workers’ organisations to advocate the rights of workers.
   • To conduct a survey on the condition of media workers during pandemic
   • To establish channel lapor.com that can be accessed by government and other stakeholder for fast response
   • To conduct gender training
   • To produce an SOP of how to handle case of sexual harassment against journalists.
   • To conduct safety training for female journalists.
   • To implement SOP on preventing, responding, dan recovery of journalists experiencing Sexual and Gender Based Violence.
     
     
7. KSPN
   
   KSPN has 7 campaigners, but only 3 of them who did the campaign. Campaigners of KSPN used Facebook to spread the message. From the social media campaign, they produced 10 social media posts with 35 shares.
   
   
   For the workplace meetings, KSPN reached 149 people attending the meetings with 101 men and 48 women. KSPN socialized topics on HIV, C190, and violence and sexual abuse in the workplaces with some parties, including their members in the center and in some regions. The participants were enthusiast on those topics, especially the C190.
   
   
   After the meeting, the attendees planned to socialize about those topics to more members in their regions, to socialize HIV and C190 to their members on 2 December and 14 December. They also planned to meet the legislative members of Central Java on 22 December 2021 to advocate those issues.
   
   
8. Jarak
   
   Jarak has 9 campaigners and all of them completed the campaign very well. Campaigners of Jarak used various social media such as Instagram, Facebook, citizen journalism media such as Kompasiana, local news portal in Sumatera Utara and Manado, and Hello. Each campaigner developed several key messages. Messages that are quite attractive to the public are the ones with the topics on Disabilities, Inclusive Work Environment, and Protection of Domestic Workers. For the social media campaign, they produced 194 social media post through Facebook, Instagram, twitter, Hello, and YouTube with 906 shares.
   
   
   The JARAK team managed to hold discussions 20 times with 7 held offline and 13 online meetings. The total number of participants was 277 people, with 199 women and 78 men. The campaigners were successful in designing discussions with several communities with topics on Gender equality, building an inclusive environment, Protection of domestic workers and decent work, and promotion of C190. The participants were very enthusiast in the meeting because the topics are very relevant to their works and lives.
   
   
   The campaigners raised different topics for their discussions. In particular, two campaigners were able to discuss the theme of HIV/AIDS with PLWHA which turned out to be a means of exchanging information and strengthening for PLWHA themselves. Other campaigners held meetings with target groups of domestic workers and discussed the decent work and efforts to prevent child labour. The activities were carried out with an organization of domestic workers in Malang, East Java which has been established for five years since the ILO's PROMOTE project was initiated and the domestic workers group in East Jakarta. Another campaigner also conducted discussions with groups of workers with disabilities (visual disability) through online methods. The discussions were about sharing experience especially about discrimination they have been facing.
   
   
   From the discussion, it could be observed that many of the attendees were not familiar with gender issues. Most of them need knowledge about gender equality, disability rights, and HIV/AIDS. Some of them also opened their experience in being victims of discrimination, abuse, bullying, and they need a safe place to report what they experience and the trauma healing service. Generally, the attendees were very interested to the discussion and they thought that the discussion was very useful. They wished the discussion will be held continuously with various topics.
   For the follow up, the campaigners plan to collaborate with organisations that concern with gender equality, such as ILO and other organisation to build their capacity and to continue the campaign. They like doing campaign and they want to continue doing it. They also plan to advocate the fulfilment of domestic workers’ rights, such as social security and national health service.
   
   
9. Jala PRT
   
   Jala PRT was the most successful campaign organization, compared to others. For the social media campaign, they produced 336 social media post through Facebook and Instagram, with 2,881 shares. They were very organized in their campaign works. For the social media, they campaigned gender equality, inclusion, and non-discrimination by relating those issues to the nature of their works as domestic workers. They are also very popular on Facebook and are very tech savvy. They designed attractive posters for their social media content and are capable to use design software, such as Canva.
   
   
   Jala PRT’s campaigners were also very organized. In order to do the workplace meetings, they mobilized their members from all over Indonesia to attend the meeting. As a result, the workplace meetings were attended by 339 people in total. This number has achieved more than the target of 270 people attended the meeting. In the discussion, they discussed about gender equality, disability, HIV, decent work for domestic workers, minors who work as domestic workers, and refugee issues. Many of the participants shared their experience of receiving violence, exploitation, sexual abuse, and discrimination while working. For the participants, they never learned about disability and HIV. Therefore, the sessions were very useful to help them to eradicate the existing stigmas and to understand more about people living with HIV and people with disabilities. They also conducted WhatsApp quiz for the participants and 3 people with the best answers received small gifts. For the follow up actions, they planned to do the discussion regularly; to conduct training on those issues, and to add more campaign members in the organization.
   
   
10. Konde
    
    Konde is a media company, and they did the campaign differently. Konde has 7 campaigners who were responsible to produce 2 articles published on Konde.co and Line Today, a social media post on Konde.co’s Instagram, and an Instagram live. For the Instagram live, Konde discussed about Flexploitation among female workers. 176 people joined the session. This Instagram Live aimed to inform the public, especially young people, to understand more about exploitation in work, its impact and how to respond to it. Mainly, for women and minorities who are the most vulnerable.
    
    
    Following up from the campaign, Konde plans to participate in national advocacy of ILO Convention 190 with labor networks, to include the C190 in advocacy at the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) in their SOP to stop violence and sexual harassment of journalists, and to include a framework to end violence and sexual harassment in advocating a worker (victim) of the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI).
    
    
11. K-Sarbumusi
    
    K-Sarbumusi had 9 campaigners but only 8 people did the campaign. For the social media posts, K-Sarbumusi’s campaigners had 197 posts with 725 shares. The workplace meetings involved 289 people. The workplace meetings were also used to enhance the members’ capacity.
    
    
    For the workplace meetings, the campaigners raised issues on gender equality, non, discrimination, inclusion, domestic violence, sexual violence, the condition of Indonesian migrant workers, equal employment and opportunities, menstruation leaves, the draft bill on eliminating sexual violence, and women participation in village development. The attendees were factory workers, migrant workers, and farmers. From a workplace meeting conducted by one of the campaigners, the attendee agreed to establish Organisasi Perempuan Migran Indonesia (Indonesian Migrant Worker Organisation).
    
    From the meetings the participants agreed on the following actions:
    • Providing remote education for Indonesian domestic workers
    • Provide assistance for the children of Indonesian domestic workers
    • Conduct parenting class for the caregiver of the children of Indonesian domestic workers
    • Advocate the sexual violence issues to legislative members.
    • Keep campaigning gender equality to K-Sarbumusi members and public.
      
      
12. KSPSI - CAITU
    
    KSPSI – CAITU had 9 campaigners, but only 6 of them did the campaign. The campaigners made 85 social media posts with 3 shares only. The social media campaign did not go well with them. However, for the workplace meeting, 238 people involved in the meeting.
    For the social media campaign, they posted materials related to gender equality, inclusion, and non-discrimination through Facebook, Instagram, and twitter.
    
    
    For the workplace meetings, they discussed some issues such as workers’ rights, gender equality, inclusion, non-discrimination, HIV, disability rights, bullying and harassment. From the meeting, they have developed some follow up plans. They used the meetings to get recommendations to their organisations and to discussed them to the company management. The recommendations will be the organisations’ work plans for December. Some of the recommendations are to conduct gender training, to have inclusive company policies related to workers’ rights, health insurance, maternity and menstrual leaves. They also committed to continue doing the campaign even though the ILO project has ended.