The Ministry of Labor on Thursday set this year’s Equal Pay Day at Feb. 24, based on estimates that Taiwanese women needed to work that far into the year to earn the same amount as the average man did last year.
The date of Equal Pay Day is derived from the estimate that Taiwanese women on average have to work 55 more days than men at their current rate of pay to earn the same amount because their salary is 15 percent less than that of their male coworkers.
This year’s figure is better than last year’s, which came four days later, on Feb. 28 (59 extra working days for women). Equal Pay Day in 2013 was worse still, falling on March 2.
Equal Pay Day is a symbolic day that can be different for each nation. Each nation designates its own Equal Pay Day depending on how many more days it takes working women to earn the same salary as their male counterparts.
The concept was established in 1996 by the US National Committee on Pay Equity. It aims to raise public awareness of the gap between men’s and women’s salaries.
Taiwan’s gender wage gap of 15 percent remains smaller than the US’ 17.5 percent. The next Equal Pay Day in the US is on April 14.
Taiwan’s wage gap is also better than Japan’s 33.5 percent and South Korea’s 30.8 percent last year.
While calling for efforts to further close the gap, the Ministry of Labor said the numbers indicate that salary disparity in the workplace has steadily improved since 2003, when the gender pay gap was at 20.1 percent.
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
RSS