While some Taiwanese men have been busy recently creating an uproar about the nation's power, some Taiwanese women have been carrying out a quiet and peaceful revolution to make Taiwan a more progressive country.
Last week, a private women's group held an international seminar on how Taiwan might become a signatory member of the UN's Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women.
At its 25th meeting last week, the Cabinet's Commission on Women's Rights Promotion passed an important proposal from its members from the private sector suggesting that the Cabinet and its agencies consider gender perspectives on important matters of national policy, as well as the establishment of an index to measure gender issues and an organization to track it.
The former meeting was an attempt by a non-governmental organization to push Taiwan toward more active and sensible international participation, and thereby demonstrate its society's resolve in pursuing democratization, the rule of law and human rights. The latter was an effort by the government to show Taiwan's commitment to achieving national gender equality by furthering a strategy of pushing gender issues into the mainstream.
Actually, the government already passed a set of policy guidelines and a white paper on women's issues two years and eight months ago. Aside from the usual custom of focusing the statement on topics relevant to women, these guidelines also addressed ideal gender relations in society.
Although there have been some improvements in women's rights since then, the lack of a mechanism dedicated to promoting gender equality in the Cabinet and its ministries means that there is still a long way to go to reach the gender equality goals laid out in the guidelines. This is mainly because there has been no way to effectively integrate the goals listed in the guidelines into Taiwan's overall national development plan.
If national development policy fails to consider gender issues, then the principle that all people should be able to enjoy the fruits of development could easily be forgotten. If the plan's main aim is to improve the fortunes of Taiwanese citizens, but fails to take gender perspectives into account, it's likely that only the privileged sex will benefit from it and as a result, gender relations within society will fail to improve.
In fact, this phenomenon has existed throughout the world for ages. At the UN's Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action finally called for the mainstreaming of women's issues to achieve the goal of gender equality.
Looking back on the past 10 years, as the world's advanced nations strive to develop into more civilized and progressive places, all of them have chosen to pursue a policy of mainstreaming gender issues in their development plans.
All kinds of important international organizations and forums have continued to investigate how to realize this policy in their programs. It has become clear that those countries that have integrated gender issues into the mainstream have not only improved gender relations in their societies, but have also become more competitive, leading indices that measure the development of human rights and economics.
If one wants to talk about the Democratic Progressive Party's political accomplishments since it came to power six years ago, perhaps it should be credited for laying the foundation for the mainstreaming of gender issues.
Its projects have included compiling statistics and monitoring gender issues in the ministries; training public officials at work to raise awareness of gender issues; passing a law ensuring that either of the sexes will have at least one-third of the seats on all committees, as well as fostering the sharing of governing power between the sexes; establishing ad hoc committees in different ministries to tackle gender issues, as well as appointing specific contact people to act as "gender focal points," to complete the unfinished work of earlier organizations; and setting up reviews of the budget for gender issues during this time.
If we also consider last week's passage of the resolution calling for the establishment of an index for evaluating gender issues as part of the national development plan, we can say that the mainstreaming of gender issues is not just beginning, but is already coming to fruition.
It is also critical to emphasize that the government has had to use practically none of its budget to complete these projects. If this isn't a peaceful revolution towards a more civilized and progressive country, then what is?
Annie Lee is a member of the Commission on Womens' Rights Promotion.
Translated by Marc Langer
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS