Paper Title
An International Comparison of The Effects Promoted by Taiwanese Women's Policies
Abstract
Women’s awareness of power in Taiwan originated from the May Fourth Movement in 1919, when women began
to become aware of “human rights”. After the publication of the Constitution of the Republic of China in 1947, equality
between men and women began to obtain legal protection. In recent years, Taiwan government has been working hard to
revise women’s laws. The “Women’s Policy Platform” passed in 2004 included women’s political participation, women’s
labor and economics, women’s welfare and poverty alleviation, women’s education and culture, women’s health and medical
care, and women’s personal safety, as subjects of focus to enhance the rights of women.
This study was based on the results of the “Women's Policy Platform” and was compared with the “Gender at a Glance in
R.O.C.” from the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics of the Executive Yuan to understand the
implementation progress of Taiwan’s women’s policy. Sources included "OECD Gender Equality Indicator", "United Nations
Development Programme" and Taiwan's Gender Inequality Index (GII) from 2008 to 2015, with reference to advanced and
neighboring countries including the eight OECD member states, which were Japan, South Korea, the United States, Italy,
Sweden, Finland, Germany, the United Kingdom and Australia, to cross-examine the effectiveness of women’s policy in
Taiwan.
The study results found that Taiwanese women outperformed in several categories, including women’s share of parliamentary
seats, female unemployment, the ratio of female business owners, the average salary ratio of female employees in industry and
service industries to male salary, the proportion of population above 25 years of age with education above average, the ratio
of female with higher education and the birth rate of underage females at age 15 to 19. In comparison with international
indices where the policy implementation must be reinforced, the ratio of female public servants, the difference in gender
employment ratio, the average female life span, the gender suicide mortality rate and the suicide rate of working women in
Taiwan, particularly showed poorer scores in ranking. Although there was no international data available to compare
"women's welfare and poverty alleviation", the government's effort did show a trend of improvement from relevant data. The
number of women's welfare service centers, the general condition of nursery care in the community, the marriage and
childbearing (resuming) profile of married women aged 15 to 64 and many others, have greatly improved, especially when the
government actively promoted the kinship care policy, where apparent increase was observed in the number of primary
caretakers for children of women in marriage and the number of relatives as caretakers. The most pressing indicator for
improvement was "women's personal safety", which barely showed any progress. The ratio of female as victims has remained
at 8 to 90%.
International gender rating showed Taiwan as one of the countries with fair equality to both genders that women in Taiwan
enjoyed high level of education, low fertility rate, low child care rate and low labor participation rate. It was clear that
Taiwanese women have gradually moved away from traditional role, even though they still encounter difficulty in workplaces.
Compared with other advanced countries, women in Taiwan spent more time in education, and yet show lower labor
participation rate. If Taiwanese women choose family over job, there are problems of decreasing child care ratio and fertility
rate. Taiwan’s gender inequality index was low and women’s roles and responsibilities were not balanced. In general, citizens
were able to enjoy rights, but they tend to dodge obligations, marriage, maternity and employment as they seemed to be
unwilling to bear more burdens, which could be contributed to Taiwan’s employment environment, or there was still much
room for discussion about gender education in Taiwan.
Index Terms—Women's Policies, Gender Equality Indicator, Gender Inequality Index