Although feminists and gender equality advocates have made considerable headway in Taiwan over the years, recent comments by a female politician that the government should provide unmarried women with subsidies are a sharp reminder that the fight for gender equality is far from over.
During a question-and-answer session at a meeting of the legislature’s Internal Administration Committee last week, People First Party Legislator Chang Show-foong (張曉風), a noted female novelist, suggested that the government should provide aid to women “who should have married, but have not,” and that Taiwanese men should marry local women rather than foreigners.
“There are many excellent women who should have married, but have not; the more Taiwanese men marry foreign women, the less opportunities Taiwanese women have for marriage,” she told the committee. “Taiwanese women have been abandoned by Taiwanese men and become so-called ‘leftover women’ because of this phenomenon, which could lead to a great loss for the nation.”
As if describing unmarried women in Taiwan as “leftover women” was not sexually discriminatory enough, she went on to attack immigrant spouses and espouse some half-baked biological “theory” to discourage interracial marriage.
“It is biologically more normal for people to choose their spouse within the country, and I do not know what has happened to the male creatures in this country that they need to look abroad for female creatures to marry. Maybe it is because foreign brides are easier to control and do not make a sound when they are beaten,” she said.
As a highly educated woman and a female politician, Chang is expected to understand the long-term battle that has been fought for women’s rights in this country, one important element of which is freedom of choice in marriage. Unfortunately, her comments served only to deepen the gender stereotype that all women desperately want to get married.
In modern Taiwan, where the social and economic status of women is constantly improving, marriage has become a choice, not a necessity for women, and many have chosen not to marry because they want to stay single, not because they have been abandoned by men, as Chang suggested.
In addition, by conflating what she called the “leftover women” phenomenon with the increasing number of immigrant brides, Chang confused cause and effect.
Women’s empowerment and gender equality awareness have allowed women to weigh their options more carefully and prompted men who have had trouble finding spouses at home to turn to foreign brides.
Statistics from the Ministry of the Interior show that there were 2.7 million single men and 2.1 million single women aged 20 to 49 last year.
In 2010, 50.9 percent of women aged 20 to 49 were married, compared with 44.3 percent of men, the ministry’s figures showed.
The official figures lay bare the empirical fallacy upon which Chang based her argument about modern marriage in Taiwan. Moreover, even if immigrant spouses were to disappear tomorrow, that would not mean unmarried women in Taiwan would necessarily choose to marry those “leftover men.”
When faced with such an attempt to drag women back into traditional marriage and blame foreign spouses for taking their place in the domestic marriage market, Taiwanese women need to realize that their rights in the 21st century are not quite as secure as they assumed, and that the road to women’s emancipation and gender equality remains littered with obstacles.
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
In an article published on this page on Tuesday, Kaohsiung-based journalist Julien Oeuillet wrote that “legions of people worldwide would care if a disaster occurred in South Korea or Japan, but the same people would not bat an eyelid if Taiwan disappeared.” That is quite a statement. We are constantly reading about the importance of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), hailed in Taiwan as the nation’s “silicon shield” protecting it from hostile foreign forces such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and so crucial to the global supply chain for semiconductors that its loss would cost the global economy US$1
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
Sasha B. Chhabra’s column (“Michelle Yeoh should no longer be welcome,” March 26, page 8) lamented an Instagram post by renowned actress Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊) about her recent visit to “Taipei, China.” It is Chhabra’s opinion that, in response to parroting Beijing’s propaganda about the status of Taiwan, Yeoh should be banned from entering this nation and her films cut off from funding by government-backed agencies, as well as disqualified from competing in the Golden Horse Awards. She and other celebrities, he wrote, must be made to understand “that there are consequences for their actions if they become political pawns of