Women as secondary earners: the labour market and marriage expectations of educated youth in urban indonesia

Abstract

In the face of rapid increases in women’s labour force participation and educational attainment, gender disparities in other measures of labour force outcomes in Indonesia remain persistent. Even for the tertiary educated sub-group of the urban population, sizeable gender disparities in hourly wage, total wage, and occupational segregation continue to materialize. This thesis is an extension of the existing international literature that points to traditional gender roles in marriage as the main supply-side drivers of the persistent gender gap in the labour market. Instead of focusing on the gender gap in observable labour force outcomes, the primary objective of this thesis ventures beyond the labour market, and adopts a micro-level approach to examine the gender dimensions of labour market aspirations in the context of expectations of gender roles in marriage amongst university students in urban Indonesia. The focal argument in this thesis is that gendered labour market expectations showing women’s lower intended labour force attachment relative to men, are a reflection of the prevailing norms in urban Indonesia denoting women’s secondary economic role in marriage. This thesis employs both secondary data sources and primary data collected through fieldwork. First, to provide context to primary data collection, the study utilises secondary data mostly drawn from the Population Module of the 2000 Indonesian Census, a nationally representative cross-sectional data set compiled by the Central Bureau of Statistics, to illustrate the labour market outcomes of the tertiary educated urban population and of tertiary educated couples. Second, fieldwork incorporating survey and in-depth interviews was conducted in 7 universities in Jakarta and 5 universities in Makassar between February – August 2004. The main data collection tool, The University Students Survey 2004: Expectations of Career and Marital Life, was administered among senior university students in the city of Makassar (N=674) and Jakarta (N=1087). The data collected through this research is argued to be of particular significance to the study of gender relations in Indonesia at a time when the country is undergoing a multifaceted transition: Economic development and the ongoing structural transformation of the economy and the labour market, (2) Political reforms and uncertainties following the fall of Soeharto, (3) Demographic transition in urban Southeast Asia denoting delayed age of first marriage and childbearing, and (4) Globalization and the emergence of an increasingly Western-dominated international culture in urban centres. Drawing from the fieldwork findings, the study highlights that there is a preference towards dual-earner marriage among the students surveyed in both Jakarta and Makassar. However, despite the seemingly egalitarian outlook towards marriage nominated by both male and female respondents, their work expectations in the context of marriage continue to underline women’s position as secondary earners. The study finds gender and study sites are factors that differentiate the respondents’ occupational intentions and earnings expectations. Most importantly, in both study sites, female respondents’ intended labour market attachment, as proxied by preference to work in the coming years, is inferior to that of the male respondents. Furthermore, as expected, women’s gender role attitudes, and not men’s, are found to be significant predictors of future work preference. Such findings confirm that there is a persistent perception of male breadwinning responsibility in the students’ expectations. Analysis of in-depth interviews suggests that labour market expectations embody the entrenched socialisation and institutionalisation of gender roles in marriage. This thesis proposes that in societies where cultural values and social control remain highly regarded, such social conditioning affecting the interplay between marriage and labour market expectations should be noted in further inquiries on the gender gap in the labour market. Show more