Women's Participation is Still Low in Indonesia's Technology Industry

The low level of women's participation in the world of technology is still an issue in Indonesia. Although many technology companies that are classified as startups contain millennials who are technology literate and have a modern culture.

The panel discussion "She Loves Tech" held by Cocowork last week (4/8), presented Co-Founder Impact Hub at Coworkinc Cynthia Hasan and Binar Academy Chief Business Development Dheta Aisyah. They share tips for starting a career in the world of technology and the current conditions.

Dheta Aisyah said that the inequality of female participants for the engineering class at Binar Academy also occurred quite sharply. Of the total participants, female participants were only around 10%-15%. There are still many who consider work as an engineer to be associated with the male-only world because it is closely related to the element of logic.

In fact, according to him, this also applies to women. Precisely because they have to think logically, women have a very good instinct to solve problems and will be very useful in coding.

"At Binar Academy, one of the best graduates is actually a woman. This shows that women have good instincts to solve problems and apply them when coding, said Deta.

Cynthia gave an example, Alibaba as a giant technology company from China has 49% female employees of its total employees. According to Jack Ma, when screening incoming employees, he only sees whether each prospective employee is able to do a job or not, regardless of their gender status.

"Basically, it comes back to each other, whether the woman is able to be involved in the world of technology. No there is no correlation at all in the world of technology, all of which must be male."

For women who want to start their careers in the world of technology, Cynthia emphasizes the importance of finding a mentor. Next learn as much as possible from them, practice in real life. If it fails, try again from the beginning and so on.

"Age 20-30 years is a time to learn and make as many mistakes as possible. Then when you are 40 years old, you must already know what you can do towards success. When you are 50 years and over, it's time give back and be a mentor to others. mentoring It's important in one's life journey."

In addition, Cynthia also emphasizes women to be leaders, at least for themselves. If you are not the type that is suitable for leading others, there is no need for women to be figures leader because it can't be forced.

"Can find someone else who can replace you to be leader. It's okay if it's not the type in front. The point is to be honest to admit mistakes, because everything can be fixed," concluded Cynthia.

iPrice's research on the management of Indonesian e-commerce companies

The conditions described by Dheta and Cynthia are clearly visible from the iPrice . latest study results which analyzes the participation of both genders in the management of Indonesian e-commerce companies. iPrice calculates the roles of men and women in the top three management positions, namely Founder/President Director, Director, and Head of Division/Manager.

Overall, women's participation in management positions in e-commerce companies is only 31%, while men's is 69%. When viewed from managerial positions, only 21% of women occupy the position of President Director, 21% of Director positions, and 36% of Head of Division/Manager positions.

These findings show similarities to global-scale research. The World Data Bank shows in position entry-level professionals, women are already at 47%. However, the figure continues to narrow for mid-level and high-level management positions.

In middle management, women only account for 20%, while in high-level management only 5% occupy CEO positions and 5% for positions board members.

Furthermore, according to iPrice's findings, women's participation in management positions in Indonesian e-commerce companies is the lowest in Southeast Asia. The Philippines is the country with the highest female participation in management positions, at 55%, followed by Malaysia (42%), Thailand (40%), Vietnam (37%), and Singapore (34%).

From the World Economics Forum index, Indonesia is in the 10th position in the Gender Gap Index. This means that Indonesia is still lagging behind other developing countries such as the Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand in gender equality. This red report card is caused by the small participation of women in the workforce for senior and managerial positions.

This fact should be quite a highlight, the article is based on a study from the Peterson Institute in 2016 which conducted research on 21.980 companies in 91 countries. The result is that many female leadership in corporate management resulted in a 2,7% higher annual profit increase than those who did not.

The e-commerce sector is an online industry that is growing very rapidly in Indonesia. The Snapcart survey in January 2018 showed that the majority of online shopping consumers were women, accounting for 65%. Women are the most potential consumer targets, but managerial positions that make important decisions in e-commerce business strategies are still dominated by men.