Patriarchy Driven Invisible Exploitation Among Putting Out System Women Workers in Moslem Democracy Country

Abstract

Most workers in the Putting-out System (POS) are dominated by women who come from poor families, are married and have children, have low education and do not have skills who work because of family economic pressures. This homework is informal work that is vulnerable to exploitation by not getting decent wages, long working hours, and not getting social protection such as work accident insurance and insecure job status. The Indonesian Home Workers Network (Jaringan Pekerja Rumahan Indonesia/JPRI) is an organization that accommodates homeworkers to carry out social movements to obtain decent work. However, the involvement of female homeworkers in this movement is still very low. This study aims to describe how female workers are increasingly exploited because they are not considered worthy of their rights as workers and how the patriarchal system perpetuates this exploitation by placing women in the domestic sphere and examines JPRI efforts to raise this issue by utilizing social movements. This study is a descriptive study with a qualitative feminist approach. The selection of informants was carried out by snowballing method to members of JPRI and the Trade Union Rights Center (TURC) as an NGO accompanying JPRI. The results of the study show that female homeworkers’ choice of jobs reflects invisible exploitation based on gender discrimination and this is reinforced by the dominance of men over women through a patriarchal system that is perpetuated through the institutions of family, economic and nation. The study recommends that at the macro level, the government needs to recognize the existence of home workers by making regulations related to home workers so that their problems are exposed. Meanwhile, at the micro level, JPRI needs to continuously build awareness among female home workers that they are also real workers by taking individual and group approaches.