Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) has announced that subsidies will be issued to workers that take unpaid parental leave and that these subsidies will have a replacement rate of 60 percent. This has raised the old issues of gender rights in the workplace and gender inequality.
When the legislature passed the Gender Equality in Employment Act (性別工作平等法) in 2002, Article 6 of the law clearly stated that employed people with children under the age of three have the right to apply for unpaid parental leave. However, the law also said: “Payment of subsidies for parental leave shall be prescribed by other statutes.”
In 2006, then minister of the Council of Labor Affairs Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) planned to amend the Employment Insurance Act (就業保險法) in the hopes that labor insurance could provide a half year’s worth of parental leave. It seemed at the time as though Taiwan’s feminist movement was finally making some headway.
Policies that advocate legally protecting parental leave without pay had been criticized by business leaders. After Liu announced the “good news,” public opinion on the issue varied greatly. Both supporting and opposing arguments seem to revolve around women’s work rights, as many people worried that such regulations might hurt more than help the rights of women and further block employment opportunities.
As an example, only 219 out of out of 457 female employees of the Taipei City Government applied for parental leave without pay last year, not even half the total number of female workers.
The city government has 33 percent more male employees than female employees, but only eight men applied for unpaid parental leave last year.
Traditional ideas about gendered division of labor mean that men feel as though they should not take parental leave, which results in women taking the blame for using the subsidies.
The Gender Equality in Employment Act was aimed at ensuring women have full access to employment and there has never been any regulation stating that only women can apply for unpaid parental leave.
Traditional, outdated concepts and stereotypes such as the idea that household affairs should be handled by women and social affairs by men have stopped women putting everything they have into their jobs.
The Gender Equality in Employment Act has failed to deliver on its promises. Taiwan still has the lowest female labor force participation rate of the four Asian Tiger economies.
Therefore, we cannot demand full employment opportunities for women on the one hand and demand that only women apply for unpaid parental leave and stay at home looking after their children on the other.
The burdens of looking after a family and other household chores must be equally shared between men and women.
For example, Sweden has laws specifying that a certain number of parental leave days can only be used by the father, to encourage new fathers to spend time at home looking after their children. Encouraging fathers to look after their children in this way brings detail into legislation as a tool for advocating more advanced concepts.
Taiwan has one of the lowest birth rates in the world, so population policy, gender equality, labor, employment and social welfare all need to be carefully re-thought so as not to turn subsidies for unpaid parental leave into a zero-sum game.
We must stop employers discriminating against women and encourage men to apply for more unpaid parental leave.
Li Wen-ying is a Taipei City councilor and a member of the Democratic Progressive Party.
Translated by Drew Cameron
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