Women as Indonesia's Prime Economic Movers - Building Gender Balanced Business

• Women are the growing linchpin in Indonesia’s push toward economic power, controlling much of the spending in the country and increasingly using that spending to open up opportunities for themselves — and thus Indonesia.

• Women control 57% of grocery purchases in the country, but 9 in 10 rupiah of budgeted household spending, according to Debnath Guharoy in The Jakarta Post.

• In addition, the women control the bulk of other consumer spending, which all told makes up 60% of the national economy.

• 25% of Indonesia women work, and they are increasingly “taking more of a role in running big businesses.”: 1284-0-women-take-charge-in-indonesia.html But women are also taking control of smaller matters that single them out in the Muslim world. For instance, half of those working women get to their jobs by motorbike, with the percentage of women using motorbikes rising to 15% of the total population from 11% in just the past five years. More importantly, more than 1 in 3 women finish high school in the country, up from just over 1 in 5 in 2005.

• “The women of Indonesia are getting on their motorbikes and there are a lot more to come,” the development economist Terry Lacey writes in Asia Sentinel. “Indonesia needs them to become a world economic power. Yesterday’s men will have to learn to accept this and tomorrow’s men should welcome it.

“The Asia Sentinel report”: http://asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2246&Itemid=189