For over two decades, domestic workers in Indonesia, the vast majority of them women, have been advocating for their rights to no avail. Millions of Indonesian women and girls work in private households as domestic workers, but despite their critical role in the economy, they remain unprotected under Indonesian labor laws. This, along with the fact that these workers are isolated inside the employer’s home, means that many experience horrific psychological, physical, and sexual abuse at the hands of their employers.
Lita Anggraini, national coordinator of Jala PRT, Indonesia’s National Network for Domestic Workers Advocacy, said: “Domestic workers are workers. They provide essential services. But domestic workers are denied access and claim to basic rights and protection. They face some of the harshest working conditions, with many describing 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 toward guaranteeing these workers’ rights by getting parliament to pass the Domestic Workers' Protection Bill (PPRT) and ratify both the International Labour Organization’s Domestic Worker’s Convention and the Violence and Harassment Convention.
Discriminatory gender norms often devalue domestic labor as mere “women’s work.” This devaluation is compounded by the fact that many domestic workers enter the profession as children, some as young as 12. The lack of enforcement of a minimum age of 15 for all sectors of work and the lack of legal recognition of domestic workers as workers leave hundreds of thousands of women and girls exposed to exploitation and abuse.
Despite years of advocacy by activists, trade unions, civil society groups, and human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, previous Indonesian governments have not taken steps to bring needed reforms. Jala PRT has spent two decades advocating for parliament to pass the Domestic Workers’ Protection Bill, which contains significant improvements for the recognition of domestic workers’ rights, including protection from violence and exploitation. Yet this bill has been stalled for 20 years in parliament due to a persistent lack of political will.
The Indonesian government should not delay any longer and pass the bill, recognizing the legal protections its millions of domestic workers are entitled but have long been denied.
