Jakarta – The National Commission on Violence against Women (Komnas Perempuan) is demanding the government provide better legal protection for female workers both at home and overseas.

Commission chief Yuniyanti Chuzaifah, said Friday that women working overseas and those working as domestic maids as well as in the industrial and plantation sectors were the most vulnerable to exploitation.

She specifically singled out the highly unpopular outsourcing and contract systems as the factors leading most to the exploitation of female workers in Indonesia.

"Women's specific needs such as menstrual leave and reproductive rights are not fulfilled. All female workers are treated as 'unmarried' and thus denied their rightful familial benefits, such as health insurance for their children," Yuniyanti said in a media statement made in connection with Women's Workers Day that falls on May 8.

Indonesian workers observe Women's Workers Day to remember the death of Marsinah on May 8, 1993. Marsinah was a labor activist from East Java who was abducted on May 4 after she led a peaceful demonstration of some 500 workers calling for supplement payments for lunch and transportation.

Her body was found four days later with indications she had been raped and murdered. The incident drew international attention to labor conditions in Indonesia.

The commission noted the most common problems among female workers were substandard pay, extended working hours, arbitrary dismissal, torture, sexual abuse and trafficking. It also demanded the House of Representatives revise the existing laws and make them suitable for women.