To address the 17.6 percent gap in average pay for men and women, the Council of Labor Affairs recently designated March 5 as Equal Pay Day and said that it would work for equal pay for men and women. However, companies like Nan Ya Printed Circuit Board Corp continue to bypass the Gender Equality in Employment Act (性別工作平等法), insisting that given the different nature of work that men and women do, salaries must differ. The Cabinet has shown no interest in actually implementing equal pay.
In his policy speech this year, Premier Sean Chen (陳冲) said the government would establish an educational security net to protect the right of underprivileged children to education.
Data from the Ministry of Education’s Department of Statistics show that last year, 70.35 percent of female students were enrolled in private colleges, 5 percentage points higher than the figure for male students, at 65.08 percent. However, while families often help their sons with their student loans, daughters in the same families are left to fend for themselves, according to Pu Shao-ping’s (卜少平) research for his master’s thesis at National Taiwan University’s Department of Economics, as well as individual cases encountered by the Awakening Foundation. With tuition fees at private schools twice as high as fees for public schools, female students have to make a greater effort to obtain a higher education.
Data from the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics also show that 2,000 to 3,000 women lose their jobs every year following marriage or pregnancy. In 2010, the labor force participation rate for married women was 49.03 percent, more than 20 percentage points lower than that for men at 72.54 percent.
Because women are also expected to handle domestic responsibilities, they are more likely to work part-time or as temporary workers, and in such disadvantaged positions, they are less likely to demand equality in terms of pay, holidays and promotion.
Not only did the premier’s policy report ignore women’s difficulties in re-entering the labor market as a result of their domestic responsibilities following marriage and childbirth, he also said: “Because the demographic structure in Taiwan is rapidly changing toward an aging population with fewer children, the government will create an environment conducive to getting married, having children and caring for them.”
The premier still sees women as child-breeding machines that first of all should be mobilized as the nation is facing a falling birthrate.
Chen added that he wanted to “create an environment friendly to aging.” However, tax administration data show that 64.7 percent of those who gave up their inheritance rights in 2010 were women, almost double the figure for men, at 35.3 percent. This reflects the traditional view that sons, not daughters, should inherit.
Furthermore, data from the Department of Land Administration show that in 2010, more than twice as many men as women owned land. Land area and the declared value of land owned by men was also about twice as high as that for land owned by women.
During his time as chairman of the Financial Supervisory Commission, Chen tried to promote a mortgage policy that, in outline, would allow people to use real estate to finance their retirement by placing it as security with a creditor institution, which would then provide monthly payments until the owner died. This policy clearly ignores the fact that real estate is concentrated in the hands of men.
In 2010, life expectancy was 82.55 years for women and 76.13 years for men, which means women live 6.42 years longer than men. If they cannot finance their retirement, the problems posed by the work environment and land concentration mean that “living to a ripe old age” takes on a new meaning for women: “suffering to a ripe old age.”
Regardless of how sweet the Cabinet’s sugar-coated policies appear to be, the real question is whether they are relevant to women.
Lin Shih-fang is a lawyer and secretary-general of the Awakening Foundation.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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