While thousands of people took to the streets on Sunday in cities around the world to speak out against gender inequality and violence against women on International Women’s Day, Taiwan was relatively quiet.
This was partly due to many events, including the Women’s March Taiwan, being canceled, downsized or moved online due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
However, in a nation where women’s rights are relatively advanced, there does not seem to be the urgency to protest and fight back, compared with, for example, Mexico, where an average of 10 women are killed per day.
In conservative nations, such as Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan, women risked their lives just to march, and there were crackdowns against demonstrators in various cities and open threats from the patriarchy.
Instead of a public outcry against the exploitation of women, the mood in Taiwan seemed to be celebratory, as President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) thanked the women in various roles on the front lines in the battle against COVID-19, while countless businesses offered discounts and special deals for female customers on Sunday.
The Foundation of Women’s Rights Promotion and Development hailed Taiwan being named Asia’s leader in gender equality last month by the World Bank Group’s Women, Business and the Law project, noting that the nation is far ahead of its neighbors in female participation in politics, workplace equality as well as respect for and acceptance of gender diversity.
However, just how equal is the regional leader in equality? The numbers show that things are far from equal. For example, the Ministry of Labor last week said that there was still a 14.2 percent wage gap last year between men and women, although that number was the lowest it has ever been — down from 17.9 percent in 2009 — and significantly better than those of Japan, South Korea and the US.
So Taiwan should be proud, but it should also be wary of creating an atmosphere where people feel that complete gender equality has been achieved.
A survey by online job bank yes123 released last week found that more than half of female respondents have experienced workplace discrimination, especially regarding plans for marriage and children or their appearance.
There is still some way to go in societal attitudes and breaking stereotypes. While Taiwan has the highest proportion of female legislators of any parliament in Asia — more than 40 percent — misogynistic and homophobic remarks still marred the recent presidential election campaign.
From digs against Tsai for being single and childless to ridiculous, unnecessary, sexist remarks, Taiwan’s politicians set an awful example for their constituents, belying the nation’s progressive standings.
Other gender issues that should not be overlooked include Taiwan lagging behind more than 80 percent of the world’s nations in the length of maternity leave, the significant gender disparity and difficulty of female advancement in the better-paying high-tech sectors.
So yes, there is a lot to be happy about — especially in a world where it is often unsafe just to be female — but there is obviously still much work and education to be done.
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