There has been a lot of international news commentary about Taiwan’s presidential election and its implications for cross-strait relations and security issues in the Indo-Pacific region. However, less has been discussed about the significance of the legislative election for women’s inclusion and representation in Taiwan.
This time, Taiwan elected a second female vice president, after electing and re-electing President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) as the first female president in 2016 and 2020. The legislative election on the same day set an impressive record for women’s representation, with 47 women elected out of 113 members of the legislature, constituting 41.59 percent of the seats. That is comparable to the 48 female lawmakers in the outgoing 10th Legislative Yuan.
This achievement continues to position Taiwan as a global leader in women’s political participation. The global average for women’s representation in legislative bodies is 26.7 percent and Taiwan’s accomplishment exceeds both the global average and the Asian average of 21.3 percent. Taiwan would have been ranked 26th worldwide as of last month if the Inter-Parliamentary Union included Taiwan in its monthly ranking of women’s share in parliaments.
Taiwan boasts a significantly higher percentage than South Korea (19.1 percent, ranked 122nd) and Japan (10.3 percent, ranked 166th). The fact that Taiwan is the first nation in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage should also be noted.
My analysis of the election results reveals that out of the 310 candidates running for district seats, 106 were women and 204 were men. Interestingly, the difference in success rates between female and male candidates was not statistically significant, suggesting that women were just as likely to win as their male counterparts.
Male and female candidates from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) had a similar success rate of 52 percent. The male success rate was slightly higher than female rate among Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidates (58 percent versus 52.38 percent), although this difference was not statistically significant.
Examining the impact of incumbency on election outcomes, 28 female members from the current Legislative Yuan and 37 current male members vied for district seats, constituting 21 percent of the total candidates. Again, the re-election rates for incumbent women (71.43 percent) and men (70.27 percent) were similar. Of the 73 districts, 20 are to continue to be represented by female representatives, while nine are to transition from a female to a male representative, and six experience the reverse.
Legislators-at-large, accounting for 34 seats, witnessed the return of four women and five men from the 10th Legislative Yuan, all affiliated with the DPP. Three women and three men secured seats for the Lowland and Highland Aborigine constituencies, with one female legislator being re-elected.
Taiwan’s legislative election marks a continuously significant stride toward women’s representation and inclusion in the legislature. The fact that female candidates were equally competitive in their bids for district seats is notable.
Nathan Batto, a professor at Academia Sinica, has previously showed that a gender quota at the local level has increased women’s representation at that level, and they continue to win national-level non-quota Legislative Yuan seats. On the other hand, national-level legislators-at-large mostly do not succeed at getting elected to district-level seats.
National Taiwan University political science professor Huang Chang-ling (黃長玲) has shown that more than half of female legislators-at-large who served between 2008 and 2012 left politics after their term was over, compared with 30 percent of their male counterparts. In this election, only three female legislators-at-large ran in district elections and none won a seat. It is important to encourage and support legislators-at-large to continue their political careers by leveraging their political experience rather than merely relying on them to attract votes.
Taiwan is the first nation to hold major elections this year. I hope Taiwan sets a global example not only for its transparent and democratic elections, but also for the high level of gender equality in government. Beyond the numbers, Taiwan must continue making politics more inclusive and diverse by passing more bills to achieve substantive gender equality.
Lee Young-Im is an associate professor of political science at California State University, Sacramento, and a 2024 Ministry of Foreign Affairs Taiwan Fellow.
US president-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday named US Representative Mike Waltz, a vocal supporter of arms sales to Taiwan who has called China an “existential threat,” as his national security advisor, and on Thursday named US Senator Marco Rubio, founding member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China — a global, cross-party alliance to address the challenges that China poses to the rules-based order — as his secretary of state. Trump’s appointments, including US Representative Elise Stefanik as US ambassador to the UN, who has been a strong supporter of Taiwan in the US Congress, and Robert Lighthizer as US trade
A nation has several pillars of national defense, among them are military strength, energy and food security, and national unity. Military strength is very much on the forefront of the debate, while several recent editorials have dealt with energy security. National unity and a sense of shared purpose — especially while a powerful, hostile state is becoming increasingly menacing — are problematic, and would continue to be until the nation’s schizophrenia is properly managed. The controversy over the past few days over former navy lieutenant commander Lu Li-shih’s (呂禮詩) usage of the term “our China” during an interview about his attendance
Following the BRICS summit held in Kazan, Russia, last month, media outlets circulated familiar narratives about Russia and China’s plans to dethrone the US dollar and build a BRICS-led global order. Each summit brings renewed buzz about a BRICS cross-border payment system designed to replace the SWIFT payment system, allowing members to trade without using US dollars. Articles often highlight the appeal of this concept to BRICS members — bypassing sanctions, reducing US dollar dependence and escaping US influence. They say that, if widely adopted, the US dollar could lose its global currency status. However, none of these articles provide
Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), the son of former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee Politburo member and former Chongqing Municipal Communist Party secretary Bo Xilai (薄熙來), used his British passport to make a low-key entry into Taiwan on a flight originating in Canada. He is set to marry the granddaughter of former political heavyweight Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政), the founder of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital in Yilan County’s Luodong Township (羅東). Bo Xilai is a former high-ranking CCP official who was once a challenger to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) for the chairmanship of the CCP. That makes Bo Guagua a bona fide “third-generation red”
RSS