Abstract
This article examines the impact of internal migration, and its timing, on young women’s transition to adulthood. Using the 2010 Greater Jakarta Transition to Adulthood Survey, we identify five key groups of women living in Greater Jakarta: those who were born there, those who migrated before the age of 10, those who migrated between ages 10 to 17, those who migrated after age 17, and circular migrants. Using retrospective quantitative data, we examine the timing of five key adulthood markers for each of these groups: leaving the parental home, leaving the education system, entering the workforce, marrying, and having children. We then explore the extent to which variation in education, marriage, and fertility patterns explain the women’s current employment outcomes. Qualitative findings are also discussed to provide insights on migration motivation and the life strategies that these women adopt to navigate their transition to adulthood.
The feminization of migration is a recent global phenomenon. Women from developing nations are working abroad as labor migrants at a historically unprecedented scale. Across developing countries, women also continue to grow in their importance and representation in a central and unrelenting facet of development, that of rural-to-urban migration. While there has been research to date on the experiences of female rural-to-urban migrants in Indonesia, less is known about the timing of migration among young female migrants and how this impacts their transition to adulthood and employment outcomes.
The issue of gendered processes and consequences of rural-to-urban migration has been prominently featured in recent migration and development literature (for example, Davin 1996; Mitra and Murayama 2008). In the case of rapidly industrializing Southeast Asia, the development of factories in mega cities has been associated with the feminization of internal migration since the 1970s in the case of Thailand and the 1980s in Indonesia (Phouxay and Tollefsen 2010). Prior to the influx of young women working in factories, women from rural areas had been migrating to the sprawling urban centers to work as domestic workers. Hugo (1975) noted that, in the 1971 Indonesian Population Census, women already outnumbered men among recent migrants in Jakarta. At the time, this reflected the trend of female circular migration. An analysis of single female migrants in the 1980 population census suggested that 85 percent of migrants in the informal sector were working as domestic servants (Sunaryanto 1992, in Hugo 2000, 290). Recent literature on rural-urban migration in the region indicates that the overrepresentation of young migrant women in factory and low-skilled elementary occupations in the cities has continued (see Phouxay and Tollefsen 2010; Resurreccion 2005).
With the feminization of migration, feminist concerns began to be voiced. Radcliffe (1991) conceptualized how household gender relations explained why women tend to migrate at a younger age, have a longer duration of migration in the cities, and cease migrating at marriage. Chant (1998) further developed the household strategies approach to “gender selective population mobility” in developing nations. She highlighted that the decision to migrate among young women was often part of household economic strategies, involving little autonomous choice on the part of the women concerned.
There have also been numerous studies of the gendered dimension of migrant workers, specifically focused on Indonesian cities. Hugo’s (1975) early work on population mobility in West Java extends to his later work (2000) on the impacts of migration on women’s empowerment in the country. Hartiningsih (2000) took an up-close and personal approach to study the lives of women working in the factory “putting-out” system. This is the system whereby factories subcontract production to home-based workers, as often found in garment, cigarette, batik, or other handicraft industries. In urban areas of Java, low-skilled migrant women make up a large proportion of these home-based workers, and the informal nature of their employment means that they are excluded from labor legislations that regulate minimum wages and other employment benefits. Hartiningsih highlighted the struggle that these women endured as they negotiated their roles as mothers, wives, and income earners.
Hancock’s (2001) work on factory workers in urban Indonesia during the economic crisis of 1997–1998 indicates that migrant women’s earnings had significantly altered household life strategies and improved their family status. Silvey and Elmhirst (2003) focused on the concept of gendered social capital among the networks of migrant women workers during the economic crisis. Apart from highlighting the importance of rural-urban migrant social networks as safety nets during the crisis, their two case studies of migrant networks in Tangerang (Greater Jakarta) and Makasar (South Sulawesi) suggest that “despite women’s entry to previously male-dominated migration streams and formal sector work, their positions as daughters within the kin networks remain largely unchanged” (p. 11).
While the gender and class dimensions of rural-to-urban migration in Southeast Asia has been relatively well researched (Jones 1984; Chant 1998; Hartiningsih 2000; Hugo 2000; Hancock 2001; Esara 2004), there have been few systematic studies that examine migration and the transition to adulthood among the growing pool of young migrant women in the region. Some scholars have looked at the effects of intraregional migration on fertility, by comparing migrant women and their rural counterparts, but did not base their conceptual framework on the transition to adulthood per se (Ding and Meng 2011; Hervits 1985). Esara (2004) touched on the intersections between migration and the transition to adulthood by studying migrant workers’ transitions into marriage and childbearing in Bangkok. A study of female garment workers in Bangladesh found that migration had effectively ended the typically abrupt entry into early marriage and childbearing, hence prolonging the transition to adulthood among young women from rural areas (Amin et al. 1998).
This article is motivated by the lack of systematic studies on rural-urban migrant women amid the transition to adulthood in Indonesia. This article first provides a comprehensive overview of patterns in the markers of the transition to adulthood among women of different migration categories in the urban agglomeration of Greater Jakarta. We build on our research presented at the recent International Union for the Scientific Study of the Population (IUSSP) seminar on migration and the transition to adulthood, a seminar that concluded that migration, whether it takes place transnationally or within countries, poses both enabling potentials and adverse risks for the lives of young people (IUSSP 2010).
Using a sample of young women from the 2010 Greater Jakarta Transition to Adulthood Survey (Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute [ADSRI] 2010) and its accompanying qualitative research, we classified respondents as nonmigrants, women who migrated to the area before age 10, women who migrated between ages 10 and 17, women who migrated after age 17, and circular migrants. The overlap in our age grouping is related to the original questions in the questionnaire used to derive migration status. Respondents were asked to report where they were living at six different time points in their life: at time of birth, at age 10, at age 17, five years ago, one year ago, and at the time of the interview. If someone responded that she had been living in Central Java at age 10 and then in Jakarta at age 17, we would classify that as a move that occurred between ages 10 and 17. It is possible that the respondent had been living in Central Java for part of the year when she was aged 10 and moved to Jakarta when still 10 years old.
Classifying the respondents in this way allows us to investigate four research questions. First, we use survival analysis to investigate whether migrant girls and young women in each of these groups have distinctive patterns in the timing of the markers of their transitions to adulthood (leaving home, leaving school, entering the labor force, marrying, and giving birth to the first child). Second, using descriptive analysis, we compare employment outcomes for these women with their migration histories. Third, we examine whether young migrant women are more likely to be overrepresented in low occupational categories relative to their native urban counterparts. Finally, we analyze findings from both the survey and in-depth follow-up interviews with some of the survey respondents to further probe how migrant women working in elementary occupations negotiate the complexities that arise from migration and the transition to adulthood.
Data and Methods
The 2010 Greater Jakarta Transition to Adulthood Survey is designed to study the transition to adulthood among young men and women living in Greater Jakarta. The survey involved two stages of data collection: a face-to-face survey followed by a series of in-depth interviews. In the first stage, a survey was conducted in 2009 and 2010 among a sample of 3,006 young adults aged 20 to 34. In the second stage, in-depth interviews were carried out with eighty respondents randomly selected from the initial survey.
For the quantitative survey, the sampling process involved a two-stage cluster sample using the probability proportional to size (PPS) method to achieve a representative sample. The survey collected detailed information regarding demographic characteristics of the respondents, including current education and work situation, health and well-being, attitudes and values (e.g., work orientation, gender role attitudes, and political views), and reproductive and sexual health behavior. In addition, detailed retrospective information was collected, including the education and occupation history for all respondents by single years of age from age 12 until their current age.
In this study, we use data on the 1,760 women in the sample. While we are not able to identify the exact age of migration, because this information was not collected in the survey, we are able to identify broadly when migration occurred. The survey asked respondents where they were living at six different time points in their life: at birth, at age 10, at age 17, five years ago, one year ago, and at the time of the interview. From this information, we classified the women into five groups based on their migration history. The first group consists of women who were born in Greater Jakarta and who had not lived elsewhere. This is the largest group, containing 56 percent of the sample. The second group is much smaller and contains those who were born outside of Jakarta but were living there by the time they were 10 years old. The third group contains those who were living elsewhere at the age of 10, but were living in Jakarta by age 17. The fourth group describes those women who migrated to Jakarta after age 17. The last group defines the “circular” migrants: those who had made multiple moves in and out of Greater Jakarta; we categorize them as “Other” in our results here.
Table 1 outlines the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the women in our sample. Women who migrated to Greater Jakarta at age 10 and above tended to be older, and, accordingly, they were also more likely to be married and to have children. In terms of education level, there was very little difference between those who were born in Greater Jakarta and those who had migrated before the age of 10. However, those who migrated between the ages of 10 and 17 stand out as having low levels of education, with the majority not going beyond junior high school.
Descriptive Statistics for Women in Sample, by Age at Migration to Jakarta
One year after the initial survey, in-depth interviews were carried out on a subsample of eighty respondents: forty-two women and thirty-eight men. These respondents were chosen using a random quota sample from the initial survey sample. The initial sample design involved choosing sixty-three respondents of each gender from three age and three education categories (seven respondents per gender, education, and age group). In this article we analyze the narratives of nine rural-urban migrant women who were among the respondents.
The primary objective of this qualitative phase of the study was to obtain further insights into the dynamics and life experiences of young adults. The underlying research themes in this qualitative data collection centered on education, employment, social relations, marriage, sexuality, religion, politics, and migration. Qualitative findings in this article are drawn from in-depth interviews with nine women who had migrated to Greater Jakarta at various ages.
To examine whether the patterns of entry into the various markers of adulthood differ across women in different migration categories, we identify whether women have achieved each of the five life course markers by selected ages. The five life course markers are (1) leaving the parental home, (2) leaving the education system, (3) entering the work force, (4) marrying, and (5) having a first child. We compare the percentage of women who have experienced each of these transitions at three ages: 15, 20, and 25. We expected that migrant women are more likely to leave formal education at an earlier age relative to their urban counterparts. We also expected that women who migrate during their formative schooling years are more likely to experience disruption in their education compared to women who migrated after the age of 17.
After describing women’s broad transition to adulthood, using the retrospective information, we then focus on their employment outcomes. Our interest in probing deeper into current employment stems from the conclusion of our qualitative data analysis, which indicates that employment opportunities in the capital city are often cited by interview respondents as the main reason for their migration. The descriptive analysis employed here revisits the findings of the previous literature on rural-urban migrants in Southeast Asian cities (Jones 1984; Hartiningsih 2000; Hugo 2000; Sylvie and Elmhirst 2003) and investigates whether migrant women in Greater Jakarta are overrepresented in elementary occupations, primarily working as domestic workers.
We also investigate current employment outcomes using logistic regression. We define two dependent variables examined in separate models. First, using all females in the sample, we predict the likelihood of being employed. Second, among the subsample of women who were currently working, we model the predictors of working in elementary occupations. Our primary objective is to see whether migration status predicts the likelihood of women working in low occupational categories, after controlling for other variables including education level, marital status, and fertility. To overcome the problem of simultaneity between individual’s education level and age at migration, we ran three alternate submodels with father’s education being substituted for the individual’s education in one of them. We argue that father’s education is a good proxy of socioeconomic background and accordingly of an individual’s educational outcomes.
We end our analysis using qualitative data to probe deeper into the particular group of migrant women who appeared to be most disadvantaged in the urban labor market. Here, we use narratives from case studies that illustrate migration motivation and how the transition to adulthood altered occupational trajectories.
Results
Differences in timing of women’s life course transitions by age at migration
We start our analysis by comparing differences in the timing of life course transitions, as experienced by women who migrated to Greater Jakarta at different points in their lives. Table 2 shows the percentage of women who have experienced each of the five life course transitions under investigation by age 15, by age 20, and by age 25. The results clearly show that women who migrated to Greater Jakarta between ages 10 and 17 stand out compared to the other groups in that they experienced the various transitions at a much faster pace. For example, by age 15, nearly half of women in this group had already left education compared to only 13 percent of nonmigrant women. Similarly, one-third of those who migrated between ages 10 and 17 had already entered the labor force by age 15.
Percentage of Women Who Have Experienced Five Different Life Course Transitions, by Selected Ages
NOTE: Differences for all of the transitions by migrations status are significant at p < .05 (χ2 tests).
The differences in patterns of leaving education and entering the labor force remain as strong when comparing transitions experienced by age 20. Further exploration of work histories indicated that women migrating between ages 10 and 17 also experienced relatively high employment volatility. For example, by age 20, more than 20 percent of women in this particular age-migration category had already held two or more jobs, compared to only 12 to 14 percent of women in the other categories.
There were also major differences in the transition out of the parental home. Nearly 4 out of 10 women who had migrated between ages 10 and 17 had already left home by age 15. This is not surprising since the move to Jakarta is likely to have coincided with the move out of the parental home in many cases. As we find in the qualitative information presented here, women migrating in their teens tended to do so without their parents, often moving to Jakarta to live with older siblings who had migrated earlier (taking part in what is known as “chain migration”). Only 5 percent of nonmigrants had left their parental home by age 15.
While there were no major differences in the percentage of women who had experienced marriage and initial childbearing by age 15, clear differences appear by age 20. At this point, half of migrants who arrived in Jakarta between ages 10 and 17 had married, as had nearly a third of women who migrated after 17. In comparison, the respective fractions for those who migrated before age 10 and who were nonmigrants were around a quarter.
If the transition to adulthood is measured by the experience of the various markers, such as leaving education and having a first child, female migrants who came to Jakarta between ages 10 and 17 clearly appear to have experienced a much faster transition to adulthood, particularly compared to nonmigrants and migrants who arrived during childhood (before age 10).
Another way to show the differences in the pace of transitions is to count the total number of markers of the transition to adulthood experienced by age. A count of zero means that the woman has not experienced any of the five markers: she is still living at home, has not left the education system, has not entered the work force, is not married, and has no children. A count of five, on the other hand, means she has experienced all five transitions. In Figure 1 we compare the average number of life course markers experienced by migration group. Again, we can see that those migrants who arrived in Jakarta between ages 10 and 17 stand out as experiencing the most life course markers, and at the earliest ages.
Average Number of Life Course Markers Experienced, by Age and Migration History
Migration and current employment outcomes
Our earlier analysis showed that female migrants, particularly those who migrated after age 10, were significantly more likely to enter the work force at an earlier age than were nonmigrants. In this section, we explore whether differences also exist when comparing a number of measures of current employment outcomes.
As seen in Table 1, overall employment, that is whether women were working, differed somewhat by migration status. In the entire sample of women, 47 percent were employed at the time of the survey. However, among later-age migrants (arriving at ages 10–17 and after 17) around only 40 percent were working, whereas among nonmigrants and migrants arriving before age 10, 50 percent were working. This difference is largely explained by the differences in the demographic composition of the migrants in relation to marriage and children. In the next section, multivariate analysis confirms that, after controlling for marital status and whether the woman had children, there are no significant differences in the probability of being employed across the five groups (see Table 4).
Among women who were employed, we examined the number of hours they worked and the types of occupations in which they were working (Table 3). We can see that women who migrated between ages 10 and 17 are working notably longer hours than the other groups of women. In fact, more than half of these women are working 55 hours or more a week compared to only 22 percent of nonmigrant women.
Employment Characteristics of Women in Greater Jakarta, by Status and Age at Migration
Migrant women also differed in terms of the places where they worked and the type of occupation in which they were employed. While early-age migrants (those who migrated between birth and age 10) had similar employment patterns to nonmigrants, later-age and circular migrants are more likely to be self-employed or to work as domestic workers. A tabulation of occupational categories indicated that, while only about 10 percent of early-age migrants and nonmigrants worked in elementary occupations, which encompass jobs such as house servants, maids, and cleaners, the respective figure for later-age migrants was around 30 percent.
Predictors of working as domestic workers
Following the findings from Table 3, we investigated whether the likelihood of working as a domestic worker is significantly related to the timing of migration for the set of women who were employed at the time of the survey. Table 4 shows the results of the logistic regressions with age at migration, highest education level, age group, marital status, and whether the woman has a child or children as independent variables.
Odds Ratio of Being Employed and of Working as a Domestic Worker
p < .1. **p < .05. ***p < .01.
Prior to running the model that focuses on the odds of being a domestic worker, we ran a model that examined the predictors of being employed among all women. For both the overall employment model and the domestic worker model, we begin by looking at the association between age at migration and employment status without adding any other control variables. In the second step, we add other explanatory variables including a dummy variable that denotes whether the respondents had graduated from senior high school. Here, we note the potential of simultaneity between age at migration and education level. To address this issue, we run a third step in which we substituted the woman’s education level with her father’s education level. As father’s education is a proxy for socioeconomic status, we expect that the odds of working as a domestic worker would be higher for those whose fathers had a relatively low education level.
We begin by examining the predictor of whether a woman is currently employed. In our base model, the reference category includes women born in Jakarta and early-age migrants. These two categories of women were grouped together due to the small number of women in the migrating-from-birth-to-age-10 category as well as the relative similarity among the two groups, as shown in Table 3. The base model indicates that, relative to the reference group, the odds of being employed are significantly lower for later-age migrants. However, after adding age, education, marital status, and presence of children as explanatory variables, the influence of age at migration on current employment disappears.
In the second series of models, we find that the odds of working as a domestic worker are significantly higher for all migrants compared to the reference group. However, after controlling for age and education level, the importance of migration status becomes much weaker, and there is no longer any significant difference between migrants who arrived between ages 10 and 17 and the reference group. Such results can be interpreted as meaning that lower levels of education partly explain why migrant women are more likely to be disadvantaged in the urban labor market. However, even after controlling for education, age, marital status, and fertility, we find that migrants who arrived after age 17, as well as circular migrants, are significantly more likely to be employed as domestic workers, compared with their nonmigrant peers.
We found that substituting father’s education for individual’s education substantially alters the odds and the significance level for the age at migration variables, indicating potential simultaneity between education outcomes for respondents, timing of migration, and low occupational outcomes. Specifically, using father’s education instead of individual’s education increases the magnitude of the influence of the age at migration and alters the significance level for the 10- to 17-year-old migrant group. Holding all else constant, for women who migrated between ages 10 and 17, the odds of working as a domestic worker are almost three times the odds for the reference group. The odds of working as a domestic worker are even higher for later-age migrants and circular migrants, with the latter having 8.5 times the odds of the reference group. While age, marital status, and presence of children are insignificant predictors of being a domestic worker, as initially expected, it appears that father’s education level is negatively associated with the likelihood of working as a domestic worker.
Negotiating migration and the transition to adulthood
In the results presented here, we have shown how migration and its timing over the life course are associated with differentiated patterns of entry into the stages of the transition to adulthood. We have found that later-age migrants, particularly those who migrated to Jakarta between ages 10 and 17, have the fastest progression through the stages of the transition to adulthood.
At this point, we consider a methodological question often found in migration research, namely, that migration decisions and education/employment outcomes are a joint process. The problem of endogeneity arises as we do not know whether a young woman had to leave school because she was about to migrate or whether she migrated as a consequence of leaving school. The same could be said about the transition to marriage. Do women who migrate represent a selected group who for some reason tend to marry early, or does the prospect of migration urge women to marry at an early age prior to leaving the village?
Due to the nature of our dataset—data from stayers in the migrants’ village of origin were not collected—we cannot make any inference about this issue using survival analysis alone. In the multivariate framework used here, we attempted to get around the issue of simultaneity among education, employment, and migration by using father’s education as a proxy for an individual’s socioeconomic background. The results indicated an association between low occupational outcomes with both the respondents’ age-migration categories and their fathers’ socioeconomic background.
Aside from making inferences about the interplay between age at migration and the transition to adulthood using our survey data, much can be conveyed from the case studies on migrant women in our study. An analysis using nine case studies of migrant women included in our qualitative sample supports our multivariate findings on how parental socioeconomic background shaped the path of the transition to adulthood among women migrants.
Seven out of the nine women came from relatively disadvantaged families. A prominent theme emerged from the interviews with these women. Financial hardship caused them to exit prematurely from formal schooling and to seek employment in the city. For example in Ijah’s case (age 32, married with two children, originally from Majalengka- East Java), her parents could not afford to pay school fees beyond primary school, so she migrated to Jakarta at age 13. The decision to migrate to Jakarta was propelled by the lack of resources to pay for her education, so in her case migration was not “disruptive” to formal schooling. Rather, it was a consequence of early exit from school. Lasmini (aged 30, married with two children, originally from Lampung) also came from a poor family background, which prompted her migration to Jakarta at age 12 after she finished primary school.
For many of the women interviewed, their early working lives in Jakarta involved a variety of low-level jobs. Ijah first started working in the home garment industry, before becoming a cleaner and then a factory worker. Similarly, Siti (age 24, married with two children, originally from Brebes, East Java), who had migrated to Jakarta after completing junior high school at the age of 15, first worked at a small food shop selling rice dishes, before moving on to work in a bread factory.
While the overall life outcomes of these young migrant women appear to be relatively disadvantaged compared to their native peers, they themselves tend to feel that they are in a better position than if they had stayed back in their home town. For example, looking back, Ijah said she felt she had made the right decision to move to Jakarta, because “if I had stayed in my village I would not have been able to change my life as the only available job is working in the rice field, and I wouldn’t want that.”
Migration also opened up new opportunities for social mobility, as in the case of Sri (age 32, married with three children, originally from a village in Bogor), who came to Jakarta in 1992 when she was 13. Unable to finish primary level madrasah (religious school) due to her family’s financial constraints, she moved to Jakarta to live with her older sibling (a case of chain migration) and began working in a variety of jobs, including restaurants and a garment factory. At the age of 17 she already felt she had become independent, both psychologically and economically. She married when she was 18, and when she was 21, she started a mobile business with her husband, selling soto (chicken and lemongrass soup). Ten years later, at the time of the interview, the business had grown substantially, and she now has employees who run eleven mobile food carts and a semipermanent food stall.
Chain migration was particularly important for women who migrated after age 10. Respondents cited that relatives or siblings who had relocated to the city earlier were important connections in securing both a place to live and employment in elementary occupations in the city. For example, both Ijah and Lasmini were able to live with their older sisters when they first moved to Jakarta. In Titi’s case (age 32, married with three children, originally from Bogor-West Java), her brother secured her a job at his restaurant, which allowed her to move to Jakarta when she was 13.
Many of the women who migrated in their teens met their husbands while in Jakarta, whereas others who moved at older ages, such as Evi (age 30, married with two children, originally from Kalimanatan), who had moved to Jakarta when she was 29, migrated with their husbands and children. Marriage and motherhood often entailed giving up regular work (as factory workers, for example) and finding alternative sources of income in the informal sector. For example, Ijah stopped working after having children, because she had no one who could look after them. To supplement her husband’s income, she sometimes sold fried snacks and sweet cakes. This additional income could then be used for her children’s schooling. Maryam (age 28, married with three children, originally from Madura, migrated at 18) used a similar strategy; she ran a small business selling cold drinks in front of her rented house, to supplement her husband’s income from his job as a security guard.
On one hand, the interviews are in line with Chant’s (1998) observation that the decision to migrate among young women was often part of household economic strategies. However, the women interviewed here seemed to employ considerable autonomy in choosing to migrate to Jakarta, even when this migration occurred at a very young age. Of course, we must keep in mind that these are retrospective accounts of migration decisions that were often made more than 10 or, sometimes, 20 years ago, and in reflecting back the women may exaggerate the autonomy of their decisions. Nevertheless, a recurring theme that emerged from the interviews was that they felt that migration was the right decision, given the limited employment opportunities available in their place of origin.
Conclusion
This article provides an overview of the patterns of entry into stages of the transition to adulthood among women with different migration experiences in Greater Jakarta in 2010. We find that migrant women are not a homogeneous group. Some women migrated during their formative years, under the age of 17, often doing so independently without their parents. Others migrated after age 17 when they had already completed senior high school. We found that women who migrated into the city between the ages of 10 and 17 were the most disadvantaged relative to women in other migration categories. These women were more likely to leave school at an earlier age, they progressed faster into employment, and they entered marriage and motherhood earlier. At the time of the survey, they were more likely to have already established families. Due to the presence of children, migrant women were also slightly less likely to be employed. Among women who were employed, migrant women, particularly later-age migrants, were significantly more likely to be working as domestic workers.
While many of the migrant women, particularly those who had migrated at an early age, were overrepresented on the lower end of the occupation scale, they clearly felt that their prospects in life had been greatly improved by their migration to Jakarta. To some extent, as seen from the qualitative case studies, migration had an empowering effect both economically and socially.
Nevertheless, given that a significant number of migrant women work in lower-end occupations, which are also associated with longer working hours, further research should look into these occupations’ possible impacts on well-being among these women. If Indonesia follows the path of other countries, as education levels rise across the country and young people do not drop out of school at an early age, this pool of low-skilled migrants may diminish. This will have implications for the occupations that these low-skilled migrants fill. There are also issues regarding the capacity of migrant women in Jakarta to combine work and family beyond small-scale activities from their own home. Many migrant women do not have extended family members to care for their children while they work. Nor can they afford to hire domestic help. All this points to a future where, at least in big cities such as Jakarta, the Indonesian government will need to consider developing early childhood education and care facilities.
Footnotes
Ariane Utomo is a research fellow at the Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute at Australian National University. Her current research interests include issues in gender, education, and the labor market; online social capital; and the transition to adulthood in Southeast Asia.
Anna Reimondos is a research assistant at the Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute. She works on a number of studies investigating various aspects of the transition to adulthood in Indonesia. She is also involved in a project examining relationship formation and dissolution patterns in Australia.
Iwu Dwisetyani Utomo is a fellow at the Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute. She is the founder and leading researcher of two big studies, Greater Jakarta Transition to Adulthood and the Indonesian Gender and Reproductive Health Study. She is also working on issues related to gender empowerment and teaches Social Research Design and Gender and Population.
Peter McDonald is a professor of demography and director of the Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute. His recent work focuses on population policy, immigration, labor force and ageing in Australia, the demography of Indonesia, theory relating to low fertility, and the implications of low fertility for future populations.
Terence Hull is professor emeritus of demography at Australian National University. His recent work includes analysis of census methodology, and population trends and reproductive health issues in Indonesia and Southeast Asia.