Sexual Violence Afflicts Many Workers in Indonesia

Sexual violence is still an unfinished problem in Indonesia. One of the many sexual violence that occurs is in the work environment. This is the basis for Never Okay and Scoop Asia conducting a survey on sexual violence in the workplace. IBCWE also sees this as important, because to create a comfortable work environment is the creation of security for workers, especially women.

In the survey of sexual violence in the work environment that was spread on November 19 to December 9, 2018, there were 1,240 respondents, and 83% of the respondents were women and only 16% were men. With the majority of respondents aged 18 to 34 years and positioned as staff in the office shows the number of productive age of Indonesia.

Shocking results of this survey, more than 80% of female respondents had experienced sexual harassment in the workplace. Harassment in the workplace that is widely accepted by women is physical abuse such as being touched, held in parts of her body, and embraced; verbal abuse such as being called affection without consent, joking which leads to sex; and signal harassment in the form of an invitation to have sex and harass women.

Sexual harassment is mostly done by work supervisors or senior colleagues. This shows a strong power-relations from superiors to suppress subordinates, and take advantage of their position and position to harass subordinates, especially women. Women who are considered weak are easily made victims because of the negative stigma that women who are harassed are the result of the woman herself and a sense of threat and loss of job.

The most impact of sexual harassment is to make the victim want to avoid certain work situations that involve the perpetrator or make the victim have to deal with the perpetrator, the second is to make the victim feel ashamed and not confident, thirdly, the victim wants to leave the job. There were so many impacts on the victims, but there were not many solutions that could be obtained by the victims. When sexual harassment takes place in a work environment or work situation, of course this must be known by the relevant parties at work. Unfortunately, only 14% of respondents chose to report to HRD, superiors or management because they felt that HRD or management did nothing, feared being blamed by HRD or management, and worried that their reports would affect careers. There is a great sense of mistrust between victims of HRD or management.

This should be a big blow to the industry in Indonesia because it cannot create a safe and comfortable workplace for workers, especially victims of sexual violence. The worker who became the speaker said that he did not know about the mechanism for handling sexual harassment in his place of work, and some even stated that he did not exist. This is a big job for offices in all fields, how they can create regulations regarding sexual harassment, practice it fairly, and manage a safe work environment for all workers without distinguishing gender and position in the workplace.