KUALA LUMPUR: Indonesia women continue to face hardships in the country, according to a global poll of gender experts published earlier this month. The poll, conducted by Trustlaw, a legal news service published by Thomson Reuters, said Indonesia ranks just above Saudi Arabia and India among the world's top 19 economies. It's not easy being a woman in Indonesia, the report suggested. The poll of 370 gender specialists found that policies promoting gender equality, safeguards against violence and exploitation and access to health care made Canada the best place to be a woman among the G20 nations. According to the foundation's website, “violence, child marriage, sexual trafficking, harassment and exploitation make Indonesia dangerous for women while health services are poor." “Women suffer sexual violence each day, according to the National Commission on Violence Against Women [Komnas Perempuan], with rape being the most frequent form of violence," Sunila Singh, an independent gender expert, was quoted by the site as saying. “Other forms include sexual trafficking, sexual harassment, torture and sexual exploitation." The website also noted that 90 percent of women in Indonesia had claimed to have suffered sexual harassment in the workplace, according to the OECD Development Center, and that one Indonesian woman died every hour in childbirth, according to the UN population fund.
