Indonesian domestic workers’ long wait for reform

For over two decades, domestic workers in Indonesia, the vast majority of whom are women, have fought in vain for their rights. Millions of Indonesian women and girls work as domestic workers in private households, but despite their crucial role in the economy, they remain unprotected by Indonesian labor laws. This and the fact that these workers are isolated in the employer’s home means that many of them suffer horrific mental, physical and sexual abuse at the hands of their employers.

Lita Anggraini, national coordinator of Jala PRT, Indonesia’s national domestic worker advocacy network, said: “Domestic workers are workers. They provide essential services. Yet domestic workers are denied access and entitlement to basic rights and protections. They face the harshest working conditions and many describe their situation as modern slavery. And yet the state is absent.”

Indonesia’s new President Prabowo Subianto has the opportunity to take a bold step to guarantee the rights of these workers by getting Parliament to pass the Domestic Workers Protection Act (PPRT) and both the International Labor Organization Convention on Domestic Workers to ratify the Convention against Violence and Harassment Convention.

Discriminatory gender norms often devalue housework as mere “women’s work.” This devaluation is exacerbated by the fact that many domestic workers enter the workforce as children, some as young as 12. The lack of enforcement of a minimum age of 15 for all areas of work and the lack of legal recognition of domestic workers when they leave hundreds of thousands of women and girls are exposed to exploitation and abuse.

Despite years of advocacy by activists, unions, Civil society Groups and human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, have found previous Indonesian governments have taken no steps to bring about necessary reforms. Jala PRT has been lobbying for two decades for Parliament to pass the Domestic Workers Protection Act, which includes significant improvements to recognize the rights of domestic workers, including protection from violence and exploitation. Yet this bill has been stalled in Parliament for 20 years due to a persistent lack of political will.

The Indonesian government should no longer hesitate and pass the law, recognizing the legal protection that millions of domestic workers are entitled to but have long been denied.