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Taiwan No. 1 in Asia, world No. 6 for gender equality

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Taiwan No. 1 in Asia, world No. 6 for gender equality

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Sat, Jan 09, 2021 page3

Taiwan ranks first in Asia and sixth in the world for gender equality, according to a self-assessment published on Tuesday by the Executive Yuan's Gender Equality Committee.

The committee said that its rankings were based on the Gender Inequality Index introduced in 2010 by the UN Development Programme.

The composite index measures inequality between female and male achievement in three areas - reproductive health, empowerment and the labor market.

The index ranges from 0, which indicates that men and women fare equally, to 1, which indicates that women fare poorly.

As Taiwan is not a member of the UN, it does not appear in the official rankings.

However, by applying the criteria from the index, the committee calculated that Taiwan's 2019 reading was 0.045, placing it sixth worldwide and first in Asia.

In the 2019 ratings, Switzerland was first with a score of 0.025, followed by Denmark (0.038) and Sweden (0.039), it said in a report.

In Asia, Taiwan's rating was better than South Korea's (0.064, No. 12 worldwide), Singapore's (0.065, No. 13) and Japan's (0.094, No. 25), the committee said.

The labor force participation rate for women aged 15 or older in Taiwan was 51.4 percent, compared with 67.3 percent for men, it said.

Despite the gap, female participation grew at nearly double the rate of men over the prior 10 years, it said.

In terms of pay difference, women made 14.2 percent less than men in 2019 - an average of NT$291 per hour compared with NT$340 for men - which was a 3.7 percentage point improvement from a 17.9 percent gap 10 years earlier, it said.

The report said that gender stereotypes, such as ideas that men should study science while women should study the arts, can have long-lasting effects on gender segregation in the workplace.

For example, the proportion of female professional researchers in Taiwan - 22.6 percent - is higher than in South Korea and Japan, but remains significantly lower than the UK (38.6 percent) and Finland (33.7 percent), the committee said.

Fewer than 25 percent of Taiwanese workers in the construction, home improvement and transportation sectors are women, the committee said.

In the transportation sector, the Taipei MRT rail system had the highest proportion of female drivers at 22.5 percent, while the Taiwan Railways Administration had the lowest at 1.2 percent, the report said.

Taiwan passed a marriage equality law in May 2019, under which 1,257 male couples and 2,830 female couples were married in the first year since its enactment, it said.

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Taiwan No. 1 in Asia, world No. 6 for gender equality - Taipei Times

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Taiwan ranks first in Asia and sixth in the world for gender equality, according to a self-assessment published on Tuesday by the Executive Yuan's Gender Equality Committee. The committee said that its rankings were based on the Gender Inequality Index introduced in 2010 by the UN Development Programme.

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No, We’re Not Quite There Yet: Taiwan’s Road to Gender Equality

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No, We’re Not Quite There Yet: Taiwan’s Road to Gender Equality

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The inauguration of President Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan's first ever female president, speaks to the great leaps that Taiwan has made over the last few decades towards gender equality.

Indeed, there are now more Taiwanese women in the job force than ever before, increasing from 38 percent in 1978 to around 51 percent in 2014 according to a Gender Inequality Index published by Taiwan's Statistical Bureau in January. Women's educational attainment has skyrocketed from the previous generation and the wage gap has lowered considerably over the last couple of decades. The end of martial law in 1987 heralded a new era for women in Taiwan, as more women began participating in politics and social movements. Now, with nearly 40 percent of the Legislative Yuan being female lawmakers, the Taiwanese government appears poised to do even more for women at the national level. Reinforcing this idea, at a forum during Woman's Day, Tsai told the audience of young women that her administration was going "to overturn" gender stereotypes and build a "gender-friendly" Taiwan.

However, there is a darker side to whatever optimism the new administration may have about gender equity in Taiwan in the next eight years. In Taiwan, the real problems of ingrained chauvinism and the gender stereotypes that continue to exist will not easily be eradicated by government policies alone. These gender biases run deep, contained within the Confucian doctrines that permeates throughout East Asia and has festered like a tropical ulcer immune to the reality that women are also equal human beings.

The recent case of the curfew at the girls' dorms of Taiwan's Fu Jen Catholic University proves just that. There are laws that prevent schools from discriminating on the basis of gender or gender identity. Yet, up until early June, female students were subject to a midnight curfew at the university's dormitories - while male students were not. For years the school administration, spouting paternalistic self-righteousness, has remained unwilling to admit the policy as discriminatory, insisting that the policy was simply protecting female students from harm.

Cases like these show that the optimistic statistics mentioned earlier hide the fact that Taiwan's patriarchal society still maintains ownership of women and their bodies. Sure, the society no longer subjects women to a bound-footed life of endless childbearing, but some men in Taiwan still believe they can dictate how women should look, when they may or may not have children, and even with whom women should be sleeping with.

There's a clear set of expectations set and overseen by men for how women should look in Taiwan. Just tune in to local television or open a newspaper, or pick up a magazine. The largely male-owned-and-led mainstream media in Taiwan remain extremely superficial in their coverage of women's "issues" by focusing on pushing products or giving styling advice. Fat shaming of women is still oftentimes considered comedic material on talk shows. News features on kawaii female employees at McDonalds are a thing. When President Tsai Ing-wen was a presidential candidate, there was a point last year when the local media and Taiwanese netizens took the time to compare her appearance in a Time magazine photo to that of wrinkled green Star Wars character Yoda, dismantling her looks rather than her policy ideas.

Furthermore, certain state policies reinforce some of the gender biases rather than work to eliminate it.

While abortion exists in Taiwan, it exists with many caveats. As an associate professor at Taiwan's Asia University pointed out in a study published nearly a decade ago, Taiwan's Genetic Health Law, passed in 1984, provided for legal, conditional abortions with the intention of curbing Taiwan's population growth. It was never about women's reproductive rights.

Under the Genetic Health Law, husbands, parents, as well as doctors, have the authority to determine whether a woman is entitled to a legal abortion, giving control over women's bodies to someone other than the women themselves. This added qualification of needing to notify a husband or a guardian in order to obtain an abortion was a rule that the US once held as well, until the US Supreme Court overturned this policy in 1992 to protect the rights of women in abusive relationships. Taiwan, in retaining such a policy, basically gives men veto power over a woman's decision about what to do with her body when she's the one directly impacted by the baby. A recently released survey reveals that mothers in Taiwan continue to bear the brunt of the child-rearing responsibilities even as many choose to stay in the workforce, making it all the more unjustifiable why women are not given complete authority over when to have kids.

Men don't stop there when offering their unsolicited two cents on how Taiwanese women should look and act. Taiwanese women are sometimes derided for dating or marrying western foreigners; comments on these mixed-race relationships don't just end at putting down the foreign man but also include suggestions that the woman is herself easy or grossly flawed in some way. For instance, during a Taiwanese man's verbal onslaught of one such couple on the Taiwan metro last November, he was videotaped not only calling the foreign man "trash" and "ugly," but also calling the woman "Taiwanese trash" and a "whore." Terms like "西餐妹" (Western-food-eating woman) are abound on Taiwanese social media and traditional media alike, adding to the litany of online buzzwords like 風騷 and 騷妹 (both terms are the equivalent of "slut") that do nothing good for Taiwanese women. Many of the posts or articles using this term paint an ugly portrayal of the women, whether it's about the women's alleged feelings of superiority towards other Taiwanese, or disapproving the women as promiscuous.

The West's imperialist history of atrocities and unwelcomed cultural and political imposition naturally makes people elsewhere in the world resentful. Here in Taiwan, the undeniable privilege that Caucasian foreigners receive, and the preferential treatment they're given, has allowed resentment to ferment. For instance, foreigners earn around double the average salary in Taiwan by teaching English (it's not uncommon for cram schools to offer English teachers about NT $70,000 a month, while the average monthly salary in Taiwan is NT $39,000 according to the Ministry of Labor), even when they have little to no experience.

In a twisted effort to feel better about their disadvantageous social standing, some Taiwanese men perpetuate the illusion of their superiority over women. By demeaning women in intercultural couples, they are trying to feel better about not "acquiring" those women in classic sour grape jealousy - which further demotes women to mere objects that could be simply won over, akin to a trophy that somehow allows local men to gain access to some of the resources and privilege owned by western foreigners. Depicting women as "sluts" who allow easy access to foreign men robs Taiwanese women the respect and autonomy they deserve when it comes to choices they make in their personal love lives.

In Taiwan, we can laugh off a remarks made by Chinese commentators about how President Tsai Ing-wen is an inadequate leader because she's unmarried and childless. But not only should it be a somber reminder that a male Taiwanese politician said nearly the same thing during President Tsai's presidential campaign, but also that there are deep and entrenched expectations about women's "place" here in Taiwan's society that we choose to ignore, or even help perpetuate. When a woman is expected to look a certain way, to give birth at a certain time or date a specific type of person, she does not enjoy gender equality.

(Feature photo by AdinaVoicu, from Pixabay)

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No, We're Not Quite There Yet: Taiwan's Road to Gender Equality - Ketagalan Media

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The inauguration of President Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan's first ever female president, speaks to the great leaps that Taiwan has made over the last few decades towards gender equality. Indeed, there are now more Taiwanese women in the job force than ever before, increasing from 38 percent in 1978 to around 51 percent in 2014 according to a Gender Inequality Index published by Taiwan's Statistical Bureau in January.

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Is there any gender stereotype that indeed harms people?

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Is there any gender stereotype that indeed harms people?

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e.g.Men should be in charge of financial support, while women should do domestic chores.

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Do you think gender differences affect work performance? Are all genders paid the same?

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Do you think gender differences affect work performance? Are all genders paid the same?

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Taiwan ranks No. 6 in world for gender equality: GEC

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Taiwan ranks No. 6 in world for gender equality: GEC

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CNA file photo

Taipei, Jan. 5 (CNA) Taiwan ranks first in Asia and sixth worldwide in terms of gender equality, according to a self-assessment published on Tuesday by the Executive Yuan's Gender Equality Committee (GEC).

The GEC said its rankings were based on the Gender Inequality Index (GII) introduced by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 2010.

The GII is a composite index that measures the inequality between female and male achievement in three areas -- reproductive health, empowerment and the labor market.

The index ranges from 0, which indicates that men and women fare equally, to 1, which indicates that women fare as poorly as possible in all measured dimensions.

Since Taiwan is not a member of the U.N. it does not appear in the official GII rankings. However, using the criteria used in the index, the GEC calculated the country's 2019 GII at 0.045, placing it sixth around the globe and first in Asia.

In the 2019 GII ratings, Switzerland finished first with a score of 0.025, followed by Denmark at 0.038 and Sweden at 0.039.

Among Asian countries, Taiwan's GII was better than South Korea's (0.064, No. 12 in the world), Singapore's (0.065, No. 13 in the world) and Japan's (0.094, No. 25 in the world), the GEC said.

According to the GEC, the labor force participation rate for women aged 15 and over in Taiwan was 51.4 percent, compared to 67.3 percent for men. Despite that gap, women's participation grew at a rate nearly double that of men over the last 10 years, the committee said.

In terms of the pay gap, women made 14.2 percent less than men in 2019 (an average of NT$291 (US$10.39) per hour, compared to NT$340 for men), constituting a 3.7 percentage point improvement on the 17.9 percent gap of 10 years ago, according to the GEC. The GEC report also highlighted the way gender stereotypes, such as the notion that men should study the sciences while women study the arts, can have long-lasting effects on gender segregation in the workplace.

For example, Taiwan's proportion of professional researchers who are women, at 22.6 percent, is higher than that of Korea or Japan, but remains significantly lower than the United Kingdom (38.6 percent) and Finland (33.7 percent), the GEC said.

Similarly, less than 25 percent of all Taiwanese workers in the construction, home improvement and transportation sectors are women, the committee said.

In the transportation sector, the Taipei mass rapid transit (MRT) system had the highest proportion of female drivers at 22.5 percent, while the Taiwan Railways Administration had the lowest, at 1.2 percent, according to the report.

On a positive note, the GEC noted that Taiwan passed a marriage equality law in May 2019, under which some 1,257 male couples and 2,830 female couples were married in the first year since its enactment.

The full report, titled the 2021 Gender At A Glance in the Republic of China (Taiwan), is available on the GEC website.

(By Chen Chun-hua and Matthew Mazzetta)

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Taiwan ranks No. 6 in world for gender equality: GEC - Focus Taiwan

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Taipei, Jan. 5 (CNA) Taiwan ranks first in Asia and sixth worldwide in terms of gender equality, according to a self-assessment published on Tuesday by the Executive Yuan's Gender Equality Committee (GEC). The GEC said its rankings were based on the Gender Inequality Index (GII) introduced by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 2010.

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Can all genders vote for their favorable candidates?
Do all genders have equal access to education in Taiwan?

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不知道後青春期的我們會變成什麼樣子

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不知道後青春期的我們會變成什麼樣子

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你的樣子

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In Taiwan, genders isn’t the only thing that counts when it comes to the pay you’ve got. There are other  factors that affects the payment, such as your working abilities.
💩💩

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don't change my colorˋ ˊ

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due to the advertisement and social media, there is a tendency that prefer slim women in society. It comes up with the unequal stereotypes of woman’s body shape, which triggered the woman to pursue the social standard and thereby caused  the phenomenon of Eating disorders.

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因為當女性受到性騷擾的時候，常常檢討被害者為何穿著暴露，而不是檢討加害者為何有此想法。

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Yes.
Life is beautiful 🤩 😍 Ö

yaaaaa
哈哈哈哈

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I think the answer is yes.
In Taiwan, every twenty-year-old person normally has voting rights.
So they can express their opinions. The government can heard their voices and  makes the society much better.
//我盡力的表達了(›´ω`‹ )

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( ´▽｀)
I don’t think gender will affect work performance. Sometimes same work to different gender will have different result.

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Lunch🍱🍱
好吃

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我不想為我的言論負責

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對

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劉凱菁 才不是 🤬🤬

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當自己的太陽 就不用被誰肯定

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當自己的太陽 就不用被誰肯定

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不然是誰

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拯救向下墜落的星辰
卻忘記拯救自己

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拯救向下墜落的星辰
卻忘記拯救自己

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Since women might get pregnant and will no longer be able to work at the firm, women usually don’t get promoted as often as men.

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我就是你的太陽🌞

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Women made 14.2 percent less than men in 2019 — an average of NT$291 per hour compared with NT$340 for men. It still has a long way to go~~~~Although it is becoming better and better.

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好欸(⁎⁍̴̛ᴗ⁍̴̛⁎)

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誰加入了我們的聊天室

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好欸

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好誒

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莊珮妤已加入聊天室

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劉凱菁已加入聊天室

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好耶

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陳世榛已加入聊天室

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劉凱菁已退出群組

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好欸

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Still many people think that some jobs like boss are suitable for men not for woman.

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好欸(^.^)

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(((o(*ﾟ▽ﾟ*)o)))

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魔法🪄┻━┻︵╰(‵□′)╯︵┻━┻

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正在邀請劉凱菁加入群組

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鄭成功已加入聊天室。

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魔法~~~~

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不好欸

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＼＼Yeah／／
∧＿ﾍ　   ﾍ＿∧
（／ω･)人(･ω＼ )
／`　／　  ＼　`＼

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鄭克爽已加入群組

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劉凱菁請serious

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正在邀請劉凱菁加入群組

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劉凱菁已拒絕

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好耶ʕ•ﻌ•ʔ

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讚喔

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Every in Taiwan usually can go to school whatever is girl or boy
(文法錯誤別打我

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介在快樂和不快樂之間薛丁格的快樂

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介在快樂和不快樂之間
薛丁格的快樂（

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you have the salary!

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I want more money (*ﾟ▽ﾟ*)

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過分了啊🤬

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I think somewhere man's pay is more than woman's.But maybe there is only a little or in some  companies with old system.