Women Together

Vendredi 1^er juin 2012

Women’s rights groups continue to work for a better society.

This year, the Awakening Foundation and the Homemakers United Foundation (HUF) are celebrating their 30th and 25th anniversaries respectively. Both groups have been prominent in the push for greater equality for women in Taiwan. Founded in 1982 as a magazine publisher, Awakening has emerged as the foremost nongovernmental organization (NGO) aimed at inspiring women’s consciousness in Taiwan since the end of World War II. In a sense, the group picked up where organized efforts to enhance women’s social status and pursue women’s rights during Japan’s colonial rule (1895–1945) in Taiwan left off, according to Chen Chao-ju (陳昭如), Awakening’s chairperson and an associate professor of law at National Taiwan University. In 1987, the group was reorganized as an NGO following the end of decades of martial-law rule, which forbade the formation of such groups. The HUF was set up the same year to promote women’s awareness of and participation in public affairs. In fact, women’s or gender concerns have been an essential aspect of broader social movements in the third sector of Taiwan’s society.

Since those early days, legislative efforts have helped Taiwan make significant progress in safeguarding women’s rights and treating women fairly. Over the past decade, women’s rights activists have successfully lobbied for gender-conscious revisions to a number of existing laws, notably the establishment of the right of a married woman to her own property and the right of adult children to choose either their father’s or mother’s surname. Another amendment puts rape assaults, which formerly were handled only upon complaint by victims, under public prosecution. At the same time, new laws like the Gender Equality in Employment Act and the Gender Equity Education Act were promulgated both to prevent and punish gender discrimination.

Huang Sue-ying (黃淑英) is the chairwoman and a founding member of Taiwan Women’s Link (TWL), an NGO formed in 2000 with most of its board members hailing from other women’s groups. Huang says women’s rights activists have gained more results than many other social movements. A former legislator, Huang also co-founded the Taipei Association for the Promotion of Women’s Rights in 1994.

Small Place, Many Problems

The development of women’s groups can also be seen in the formation of the National Alliance of Taiwan Women’s Associations in 2001. The alliance coordinates information among more than 70 women’s groups in Taiwan at the local and national levels. Member groups have various interests and membership structures such as professional, ethnic, family or regional associations. The HUF is among its members. “We are in quite a small place with quite a lot of problems, so groups like us cannot help but be active,” says Chen Man-li (陳曼麗), the former head of the alliance and the current president of the HUF. Chen Man-li has been with the HUF since the year after it was formed. She says that although some members of the group feel that government officials lack awareness on gender and other issues, the foundation seeks to develop a sense of partnership instead of antagonism with the government sector. “At the same time, we want to keep a distance from the government in order to watch its administration from a more objective position,” she adds.

Chen Chao-ju says that Awakening works in a similar way. Despite the decades her group has spent trying to pressure the government through collective social action and lobbying in the Legislative Yuan, since 2000 a considerable part of Awakening’s efforts have turned to working with government units on gender mainstreaming.

In recent years, women’s rights activists have been invited to take part in the policymaking process by government agencies at the local and central levels. For example, the TWL’s Huang was a former member of the Committee of Women’s Rights Promotion (CWRP), a body created under the Executive Yuan in 1997 comprising government ministers, scholars and leaders of women’s groups. As part of the central government reorganization this year, the committee was expanded into the Gender Equality Committee, of which the HUF’s Chen is one of the 35 members. The work of the restructured committee is backed up by the newly formed Department of Gender Equality under the Executive Yuan, the nation’s first formal government unit of its kind. Drawing on her own experience in government committees, NGOs and the Legislative Yuan, Huang describes the three sectors as an “iron triangle” for promoting women’s rights.

Women’s groups have not only worked with one another, but also built connections with groups in other fields to address specific social issues. In 2004, for instance, the TWL joined the National Health Insurance Civic Surveillance Alliance to help improve Taiwan’s universal health care system, which was launched in 1995. In 2005, Awakening joined the Citizens Coalition for Media Reform. In 2008, the TWL entered the Fair Tax Reform Alliance, which also includes groups devoted to laborers, the disabled or social welfare issues. Huang points out that women’s rights are relevant to all major fields of government policy and public affairs. “For one thing, if the government decides to cut taxes, then women will suffer more,” she says, explaining that since fewer women have paid employment than men—about 50 percent of women in Taiwan compared with about 67 percent of men—and most women make less money, they tend to be in greater need of social welfare resources, which would be affected by reduced tax revenue.

With female health as one of its core concerns, the TWL draws attention to the gender aspect of health problems and medical treatment, saying that the medical field tends to be dominated by male perspectives. “For example, menopause is widely viewed as a disease caused by a lack of hormones that needs treatment, instead of as part of a natural life cycle,” says Huang. “If a woman has no need of menstruation, then she doesn’t have to waste her energy on it, which is not necessarily a bad thing,” she adds. In 2004, due to lobbying by the CWRP, the Bureau of Health Promotion under the Cabinet-level Department of Health set up a task force on menopause health care to provide useful information to the public. Moreover, Huang points out that when it comes to women’s diseases, health care services focus mostly on breast and cervix health as well as childbirth-related problems. Despite this, women can differ greatly from men in the progression and effective treatment of many other major illnesses, such as cardiovascular disease. “Some diseases are much more commonly seen in women or men, like lupus for women and AIDS for men,” she notes. In response to increasing calls for gender-aware medical education, since 2007 related courses have been added to the curricula for medical school graduates. “Please don’t say that all patients should be treated equally because women and men should be treated differently,” Huang says about the concerns her groups have tried to convey to health authorities.

Another difference between men and women is the latter’s longer average lifespan, which makes long-term care services a gender issue and thus a major concern for women’s groups like the TWL. According to the group’s estimates, the number of Taiwan’s male citizens over 65 years old in need of long-term care will increase from 127,882 in 2011 to 177,305 in 2021, while their female counterparts will rise much faster, going from 258,074 to 395,367. The TWL points out that this also means it is much more common for elderly men to be cared for by their wives than the other way around. In fact, women often take on the role of caregiver for older, younger, sick or disabled family members at home and in workplaces such as in hospitals and care facilities. “Women provide more care services and are also in greater need of care services,” Huang says. Therefore, activists have called on the government to offer more support to ease women’s workload. Awakening’s Chen Chao-ju agrees that Taiwan’s aging society represents an increasingly unfavorable labor structure for women, saying that the government should shoulder its responsibilities and provide more public care services. She also points to childcare issues, saying inadequate services could be a factor in Taiwan’s low birthrate, which saw each woman of childbearing age give birth to just slightly more than one child in 2011, although that rate represents a small rise over 2010. “If society does not offer sound, widespread and inexpensive nursery services, then the dilemma of choosing between job and childcare will discourage many women from having children,” Chen Chao-ju says. “Childbearing should not be viewed as a duty for women to serve the country. Rather, it’s an issue concerning women’s reproductive freedom.”

Balanced Care

As the low birthrate is considered a national security issue, the government has been taking measures to encourage couples to have more children. For example, the Gender Equality in Employment Act allows employees to take up to two years of parental leave in order to take care of children under the age of three. In 2009, Awakening and other women’s groups celebrated a revision to the Employment Insurance Act that added an allowance of 60 percent of the insured’s salary for up to six months per child for childcare leave, which was formerly unpaid. While both a mother and father are entitled to the parental leave, Awakening’s Chen says that mothers account for around 85 percent of all applicants, which indicates an “imbalance of care responsibility.” In other words, despite a relatively advanced legal framework, more often than not traditional social values favor men.

Chen Man-li of the HUF also notes that on average women earn only 80 percent of the salary earned by men. “To see if we’ve achieved real equality between men and women, we can’t judge just according to our impressions, but by statistics,” she says, citing the fact that women with education and skills equal to men often hold lower positions than their male peers. According to the Cabinet-level Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, for example, in 2010 the percentages of female principals at elementary and junior high schools were 28.4 percent and 30.3 percent respectively, but just 21.2 percent at senior high schools and 6.7 percent for similar positions at the university level. The figures have increased during the past 10 years, however.

While Taiwan has seen considerable development of women’s social roles, women’s groups agree that there is still a long way to go in fields such as health, the economy and political participation. “We still confront traditional, cultural bottlenecks,” the TWL’s Huang says. The HUF, with its concern for environmental issues, currently focuses on the problems of nuclear power and food safety. “We’re like mothers who are usually kind and patient in saying what should be done, but mothers can be fierce too,” HUF president Chen Man-li says. “We’re not afraid of taking to the streets to draw the attention of the media, government and general public.”

Chen Chao-ju says Awakening will continue to cover a wide range of issues and the organization has already spawned the creation of several other groups. One example is the Taiwan Gender Equity Education Association, which was established in 2002 by some of Awakening’s core members. In 1999, Awakening members were among the founders of the Gender/Sexuality Rights Association, Taiwan. The group was another example of the development of gender issues locally, in this case transcending the traditional distinction between men and women to extend to an individual’s sexual orientation. Such groups will continue to build new perspectives and foster more possibilities in the community. Their goal is not just to promote women’s rights, but to create greater gender balance and thus a better society as a whole.

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Write to Pat Gao at cjkao@mofa.gov.tw