The Museum of World Religions and the Red Room Association yesterday held a salon-style panel in New Taipei City featuring discussions on the achievements of women ahead of International Women’s Day on Tuesday.
The “Changing Climates” panel invited seven Taiwanese and international speakers living in Taiwan to speak on the topics “Soft skills for today’s world” and “Changing narratives in the workplace.”
Attended by about 70 people, the event opened with a ritual for Devi, a Hindu goddess of consciousness who Indian artist Vandana Mengane said signifies feminine energy.
After the ritual, Malabika Das, a trauma-informed integrative community social worker and wellness specialist from the US said if women want men to be supportive of their empowerment, men should be provided with opportunities to develop and enhance their soft skills.
“Provide infrastructure and a space for men to be able to feel their feelings, to be in touch with themselves, to be able to do all the things that apparently women do with soft skills,” Das said.
Syeda Zehra, a Pakistani doctoral student at National Taiwan University, said she felt women were not respected enough in the field of chemistry.
She said one of the reasons was that fewer women choose to study graduate-level chemistry than men.
This causes challenges for female chemistry students, because discussions and debates always go in favor of male students, she said.
After the panel, the celebrations continued with special guest performances, including traditional Indian dancing and music, at Red Room Rendezvous in Taipei.
International Women’s Day was first held as a commemoration of a demonstration on March 8, 1917, by female textile workers in Russia’s Petrograd — now St Petersburg — which marked the beginning of Russia’s February Revolution.
Largely confined to communist countries for most of its existence, International Women’s Day has become a worldwide celebration of the cultural, political and socioeconomic achievements of women after it was recognized by the UN in 1977.
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
DEADLOCK: As the commission is unable to forum a quorum to review license renewal applications, the channel operators are not at fault and can air past their license date The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that the Public Television Service (PTS) and 36 other television and radio broadcasters could continue airing, despite the commission’s inability to meet a quorum to review their license renewal applications. The licenses of PTS and the other channels are set to expire between this month and June. The National Communications Commission Organization Act (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) stipulates that the commission must meet the mandated quorum of four to hold a valid meeting. The seven-member commission currently has only three commissioners. “We have informed the channel operators of the progress we have made in reviewing their license renewal applications, and