Negotiating work, family, and traffic: Articulations of married women's employment decisions in Greater Jakarta

Abstract

The international literature on women and work calls on scholars to consider geographical, sociocultural, and institutional contexts governing women's employment dynamics over their life course. In Indonesia (and other lower middle-income regions in Southeast Asia), female labor force participation is lower in urban areas than rural areas. The largest drop-off occurs after marriage and childbearing. In this article, we argue that class and spatial context matters in examining the relationship between gender norms, gendered mobilities, and employment outcomes in mega-urban settings. Using qualitative research, we probe beyond conventional demographic studies to explore the dynamics of married women's (decisions to stay, leave, change, or return to) employment in Greater Jakarta, Indonesia's largest urban core. Our participants were discouraged from employment participation by norms that prioritize married women's role as primary caregivers, and spatial and workplace/regulatory constraints. Our analysis underscores how the participants' employment-related decisions consistently revolve around the concept of opportunity costs, defined as conflicts and tensions arise from mother's time away from children due to gender norms, lack of childcare and flexible formal employment options, and the long working and commuting hours in Greater Jakarta. Economic pressures for women to participate in the labor market are not matched by work–family policies, which are still rooted in entrenched ideals of women as wives and mothers.