Indonesian Atomic kittens break glass celling

By Terry Lacey

(January 13, Jakarta, Sri Lanka Guardian) “The tide is high but I`m holding on. I´m gonna be your number one.” So sang the girl band Atomic Kittens. Indonesia is entering what will become its nuclear age, driven by a huge expansion in energy, with key companies like Pertamina and ministries like Finance, Trade, Energy and Mines led by a growing band of atomic kittens as a new generation of top women break though the glass ceiling.

After doubts, Karen Agustiawan keeps her job as president director of Pertamina, Indonesias top state-owned oil and gas company, while all the directors around her have been washed away by a tsunami of change. (The Jakarta Post 08.01.2010)

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono reportedly understands that Pertamina could become a truly global oil, gas and energy company, pioneering renewable energy as well as optimizing gas and reducing the cost of oil imports.

The failure to hold up oil-lifting against the trend of decline as reserves were exhausted reflected lack of thrust and investment, not just harder geology and deeper waters.

Now Pertamina will push oil-lifting back up from 174,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2009 to an estimated 193,900 bpd in 2010.

Pertamina could become a global player in the Middle East or the Arab and Muslim world.

But these dreams are impossible if Pertamina, as the top state-owned enterprise in a clutch of increasingly profitable SOEs, is run in the style of an old boys club representing yesterday, as a milking cow for patronage, jobs for the boys and profits for the old elite.

So Pertamina has to change and an atomic kitten may be just the right kind of leader to change it.

State SOE Minister Mustafa Abubakar has now confirmed “The president director will not be replaced” but will keep the job she took up in February 2009, while he confirmed that seven new directors will join Karen on the board of Pertamina, chosen from a list of 25 candidates, “Most of them are from internal Pertamina nominations.” (The Jakarta Post 09.01.2010).

But she will still have to fight for progress against that conservative under-qualified under-capacity male-dominated middle that holds back much of public enterprise and public administration.

Karen is following in the footsteps of Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Indonesia´s feisty Finance Minister, as she fights back against those blaming her for the bungled bailout of failed Bank Century, while Evita Legowo, director general of oil and gas in the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources will be bouncing back in 2010 fresh from failing to find investors for 75 percent of the 40 oil and gas blocks offered for bids during last year, and as Trade Minister Mari Pangestu soldiers on fighting the good fight for free trade against pessimists, vested interests and protectionism.

Its tough at the top for Indonesia´s new generation of atomic kittens, but when the going gets tough, the tough can get going. They can always take a leaf out of the book of life by Margaret Thatcher, buy a new handbag, put a brick in it, and take a swipe in the cause of tomorrow against the nearest man defending yesterday.

The Indonesian atomic kittens are part of the inexorable rise of women in Indonesia and the Arab and Muslim world. The country cannot become the seventh largest global economy by 2040, as predicted by Standard Charter Bank recently, without them.

As Debnath Guharoy writing in The Jakarta Post (12.01.2010) explained recently, women are the boss in 90 percent of Indonesian households in terms of household budget, and control 57 percent of national grocery purchases.

In a nation whose Gross Domestic Product is 60 percent consumer driven, it is women who control most family economic decisions, from buying toothpaste to motorbikes. So far 25percent of Indonesian women have a job and this is rapidly rising, and more than half of working women go to work on a motorbike.

In five years the number of women riding motorbikes has risen from 11 to 15 percent of the population. The number of women finishing high school has climbed from 21 percent in 2005 to 34 percent in 2009.

The women of Indonesia are getting on their motorbikes and there are a lot more atomic kittens to come. Indonesia needs them to become a world economic power. Yesterdays men will have to learn to accept this and tomorrows men should welcome it. You can´t modernize the nation unless women are included in the driving seat.

Terry Lacey is a development economist who writes from Jakarta on modernization in the Muslim world, investment and trade relations with the EU and Islamic banking.