Sacrificing their careers to take on a caretaker role is not only unfair to women, but also a national loss, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday, pledging to remove all hurdles to increase female participation in the workplace.
Speaking at an event in Taipei organized by the Ministry of Health and Welfare to celebrate International Women’s Day, Tsai said that while women have demonstrated remarkable skills in various areas, they are constrained in the workplace because of insufficient government support.
As the burden of caregiving mostly falls on women, many feel compelled to give up their jobs to care for children or family members, Tsai said.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
Statistics show that the labor participation rate among women falls when they reach about 30 years old, presumably due to marriage.
“This is not only unfair to women, but is also a loss to the nation. That is why supporting and removing barriers to female employment is an important government policy,” Tsai said, who was last year elected as the nation’s first female president.
According to statistics compiled by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, the labor participation rate for married men and women in 2015 stood at 70.5 percent and 49.6 percent respectively.
However, the labor participation rate for unmarried men and women during the same period was not as skewed — at 64.3 percent and 61.5 percent respectively.
Tsai said that the government last year amended the Act of Gender Equality in Employment (性別工作平等法) requiring companies with more than 100 employees to provide childcare facilities, while relaxing rules for government subsidies for smaller corporations planning to offer similar services to workers.
Other efforts include promoting the “long-term services care program 2.0” — which seeks to make quality long-term care accessible to more elderly and disadvantaged people — and easing the requirements for small loans to female entrepreneurs, Tsai said.
The government also plans to integrate different resources to help alleviate the everyday pressures of raising families to allow both parents to focus on their careers, Tsai said.
While it is imperative for the government to increase women’s labor participation rates, “allowing all women to be able to fulfill their dreams and make their fair share of contribution to social prosperity is the ultimate goal we should pursue behind those numbers,” Tsai said.
“To do that requires changing traditional social values and continued efforts from the government to instill the concept of gender mainstreaming in various policies,” Tsai said.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat