Jakarta – Dress smart if you want to convince the bank manager you deserve a loan. But for businesswomen, they should also bring their husbands along.
"Bank people tend to underestimate women. When I first tried to apply for a loan for my own business – not my husband's – the banker doubted my ability to do business.
Instead of explaining about the procedures and interest rates, the banker told me to bring my husband along so he could explain all that to him instead," the Indonesian Women's Business Association (IWAPI) chairperson Suryani Sidik Motik said, when sharing her not-so-emancipating experience.
In this era of reform, women have yet to feel free from discrimination. Sharia bylaws and the much-debated pornography bill aside, the banking sector also contributes to the dim outlook of gender equality in the country.
For women to succeed in business, they need at least three times the effort men make, Suryani said Thursday during the launching of a report Voices of Women in the Private Sector issued by the International Finance Corporation Program for Eastern Indonesia SME Assistance (IFC-PENSA) and IWAPI, in conjunction with Kartini day, on April 21.
An analyst for IFC-PENSA, Sandra Pranoto said that the report revealed that the culture in Indonesia was discriminative against women, resulting in a bias in education, law and policy, and business sectors.
She said that IFC-PENSA's preliminary study on women's access to bank loans for business carried out in a major bank, showed that only 11.5 percent of the bank's total credit for business was given to women, with the remaining 88.5 percent going to men.
"This low figure shows that there is a misperception about women entrepreneurs in the banking sector as women are actually better than men in paying back loans," Sandra said, adding the percentage of women paying back loans is 96.5 percent, higher than the 95.5 percent of men.
Suryani, who heads the 16,000-member association, of which 85 percent of the members are engaged in small and medium enterprises, said that empowering women in the economic sector would empower the nation.
Data from the State Ministry for Cooperatives, Small and Medium Enterprises shows that of the 40 million SMEs in Indonesia, 60 percent are owned and managed by women.
"SMEs contribute a lot to the economy as they have the highest capacity to survive in a crisis," she said, adding that SMEs provide 99.7 percent of jobs in Indonesia.
Suryani, citing a study from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), said that 51 percent of enterprises run by women experienced growth, compared to only 49 percent of enterprises run by men.
Suryani said that it was time for the government to pay more attention to women's contribution to the economy.
According to Suryani, empowering women economically would also reduce gender-related problems such as domestic abuse and even the rising number of malnourished children.
"Women, who are vulnerable to domestic abuse, are usually financially dependent on their husbands. If they were independent they could stand up for themselves. Meanwhile, for children's nutrition, we all know that mothers always put their children first, so a rise in women's economic strength could improve the quality of children's health and education," she said.
Assistant director of the economics department for the State Ministry for Women's Empowerment Sulikanti Agusni said that changing people's perception on women was imperative. "It has been imprinted in the back of people's minds that men comes first, while women come second," she said.
She said that once an executive of a major bank said that the bank's reason for not giving so many loans to women was to avoid the increasing number of divorces. "That just doesn't make sense," she said.
Suryani added that gender mainstreaming should be implemented in every governmental agency. "Officials in the State Ministry for Cooperatives, Small and Medium Enterprises, for example, should know how to interpret gender mainstreaming into policy."
Sulikanti, citing research conducted by the World Bank, said that an increase of just 1 percent in the percentage of women with secondary education in Indonesia would increase Gross Domestic Production (GDP) by US$735 million. Having this in mind, educating more women would surely give better results in raising the country's economic growth, compared to the current national trend of telling women how to dress or keeping women off the streets at night.