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.
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