Feminist Perspective on Economic Theory, Policies, and Institutions for Women Workers in the Informal Employment of Indonesian Post-economic Crisis

This paper aims to have a grounded picture regarding the impacts of the economic crises on women workers in the informal employment, identify the economic theory whose application is disadvantageous to the women home-based workers, support recognition of women homeworkers by the policy makers, and empower the workers through exercising their rights. Research methodology for women＇s studies from a feminist perspective is employed covering action-oriented research initiating from the grounded issues, a bottom-up approach, and a participatory method where the researchers act as facilitators. It is necessarily a longitudinal research work with a new paradigm to change the women＇s situation. This methodology is deemed effective to identify impacts of the crises as described in the paper. It can be found that the root cause of women workers＇ exploitation is the economic efficiency theory, while policy development should be specifically designed along with engendering policy makers. Exercising the rights to organize the unorganized women home-based workers is no way repeatable from standard practice of organizing formal workers. All these require action of committed and skilled feminists with adequate praxis resources.