The Modern Women’s Foundation yesterday urged the government to take more action to ensure the effectiveness of a slew of amendments to gender equality laws scheduled to go into effect on Friday next week to protect women at the workplace.
In July last year, lawmakers amended the “three gender equality laws,” a term referring to the Sexual Harassment Prevention Act (性騷擾防治法), Gender Equality in Employment Act (性別平等工作法) and Gender Equity Education Act (性別平等教育法).
The amendments were designed to strengthen legal protections for women and facilitate the prosecution of offenders by defining power abuse in sexual harassment, corporate responsibility, sentencing rules and other guidelines, the Judicial Yuan wrote in a news release at the time.
Photo: CNA
They additionally include provisions for sensitivity training in public and private institutions, victim support and counseling services, statutes of limitation extensions for some circumstances, and obligations for schools including police and military academies.
However, foundation members yesterday said that government diligence is needed to implement the measures, ensure corporate compliance and resolve potential contradictions in the newly changed laws.
The foundation’s Taipei-based call center from July to December last year received 235 phone calls, 33 percent of which were requests for assistance in workplace-related sexual harassment incidents, chairwoman Jennifer Wang (王如玄) told a news conference hosted at the Taipei Bar Association.
Men and women accounted for 15 percent and 85 percent of the callers respectively, she said.
A total of 48 percent of the callers reported incidents that fall under the jurisdiction of the Sexual Harassment Prevention Act, 34 percent of the incidents reported fall under the Gender Equity in Employment Act and 74 percent of the callers made inquiries about issues concerning the law or procedures for making an official complaint.
In addition, 35 percent asked about their eligibility for mental or physical care and 33 percent complained about employers allegedly mishandling reports of sexual harassment, Wang said.
According to the law invoked, a person wishing to make a report about sexual harassment would need to go through a distinct and separate set of legal procedures, as each of the laws was designed for different ends, she said.
Citing an example, Wang said that the Gender Equality in Employment Act mandates that employers internally address sexual harassment incidents reported to them by their workers, while the Sexual Harassment Prevention Act prioritizes punishing abusers.
The government did not create a guideline to specify which of the laws should be applied in any given situation, nor did it clarify management responsibilities after an employee makes a report or policies for rendering aid to victims, she said.
The potential conflict in the applicability of the two acts means hospitals instead of law enforcement could be designated as the party responsible for investigating or punishing patients accused of harassing nurses, Wang said.
Profit-seeking enterprises must be made to understand that turning a blind eye to sexual harassment would result in prohibitively high losses before cultural changes can happen in Taiwanese workplaces, she added.
Foreign tourists who purchase a seven-day Taiwan Pass are to get a second one free of charge as part of a government bid to boost tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. A pair of Taiwan Passes is priced at NT$5,000 (US$156.44), an agency staff member said, adding that the passes can be used separately. The pass can be used in many of Taiwan’s major cities and to travel to several tourist resorts. It expires seven days after it is first used. The pass is a three-in-one package covering the high-speed rail system, mass rapid transport (MRT) services and the Taiwan Tourist Shuttle services,
Drinking a lot of water or milk would not help a person who has ingested terbufos, a toxic chemical that has been identified as the likely cause of three deaths, a health expert said yesterday. An 83-year-old woman surnamed Tseng (曾) and two others died this week after eating millet dumplings with snails that Tseng had made. Tseng died on Tuesday and others ate the leftovers when they went to her home to mourn her death that evening. Twelve people became ill after eating the dumplings following Tseng’s death. Their symptoms included vomiting and convulsions. Six were hospitalized, with two of them
DIVA-READY: The city’s deadline for the repairs is one day before pop star Jody Chiang is to perform at the Taipei Dome for the city’s Double Ten National Day celebrations The Taipei City Government has asked Farglory Group (遠雄集團) to repair serious water leaks in the Taipei Dome before Friday next week, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said yesterday, following complaints that many areas at the stadium were leaking during two baseball games over the weekend. The dome on Saturday and Sunday hosted two games in tribute to CTBC Brothers’ star Chou Szu-chi (周思齊) ahead of his retirement from the CPBL. The games each attracted about 40,000 people, filling the stadium to capacity. However, amid heavy rain, many people reported water leaking on some seats, at the entrance and exit areas, and the
BIG collection: The herbarium holds more than 560,000 specimens, from the Japanese colonial period to the present, including the Wulai azalea, which is now extinct in the wild The largest collection of plant specimens in Taiwan, the Taipei Botanical Garden’s herbarium, is celebrating its 100th anniversary with an exhibition that opened on Friday. The herbarium provides critical historical documents for botanists and is the first of its kind in Taiwan, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute director Tseng Yen-hsueh (曾彥學) said. It is housed in a two-story red brick building, which opened during 1924. At the time, it stored 30,000 plant specimens from almost 6,000 species, including Taiwanese plant samples collected by Tomitaro Makino, the “father of Japanese botany,” Tseng said. The herbarium collection has grown in the century since its