More than 87 percent of Taiwanese women said they do not want to have children, while more than 50 percent of mothers said they are unhappy, according to survey results released by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday ahead of Mother’s Day today.
The survey, which polled 906 women between the ages of 20 and 49 with a margin of error of 3.3 percent, showed 54.9 percent of mothers said they felt unhappy while 41.3 percent said they are happy.
Meanwhile, 87.3 percent of women said they do not want to give birth.
The poll showed that 21.5 percent of women said they do not want to children because of the heavy economic burden. Deputy director of the DPP’s women’s affairs department Chiang Yueh-chin (蔣月琴) added that the poll showed women between the ages of 30 and 39 are most concerned about the cost of raising a child, followed by women in the 20 to 29 age group.
The head of the Taiwan Community Care Association, Liu Yu-hsiu (劉毓秀), told the press conference held by the DPP that the poll also suggested the nation’s low birthrate has much to do with its lack of a childcare system. Subsidies did little to encourage women to give birth because what the public really wants is an inexpensive and quality childcare system, she added.
A separate survey conducted by the online job bank Yes123 showed that 65 percent of working moms rated their level of hardship as high as 80 on a scale of 0 to 100.
The survey set a hardship index of 0 to 100, with every 10 points counting as a different range. Scores of between 0 and 60 indicated no hardship, 60 to 80 meant a manageable level of hardship and scores exceeding 80 indicated severe hardship.
According to the survey, which polled 2,122 working mothers with a margin of error of 2.13 percent, 65 percent of the respondents thought it was very hard to be a working mother and 35 percent experienced hardship exceeding a score of 90, symbolizing the excess hardships a working mother in Taiwan has to endure.
Of the surveyed women, 75.8 percent listed managing household affairs after work as the top reason they feel stress, while 64.5 percent listed raising children as the reason, 63.8 cited a lack of personal time and 59 percent said educating children caused stress.
Nearly 20 percent admitted to being stressed over the need to guard against xiaosan (小三). Xiaosan is a recent popular term that means the third party in an extramarital affair.
The survey also showed that mothers regarded governmental and corporate measures to benefit working mothers as inadequate, with 42 percent of working women feeling no beneficial measures of any sort for them.
When working mothers are faced with the dilemma of balancing work with caring for their children, nearly 67 percent said they would change their work because they were expecting children. Meanwhile, 20 percent said they did not file for unpaid parental leave out of fear of losing their jobs, the survey said.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
South Korea has adjusted its electronic arrival card system to no longer list Taiwan as a part of China, a move that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said would help facilitate exchanges between the two sides. South Korea previously listed “Taiwan” as “Taiwan (China)” in the drop-down menus of its online arrival card system, where people had to fill out where they came from and their next destination. The ministry had requested South Korea make a revision and said it would change South Korea’s name on Taiwan’s online immigration system from “Republic of Korea” to “Korea (South),” should the issue not be
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
AIR ALERT: China’s reservation of airspace over the Yellow Sea and East China Sea could be an attempt to test the US’ response ahead of a Trump-Xi meeting, the NSB head said China’s attempts to infiltrate Taiwan are systematic, planned and targeted, with activity shifting from recruiting mid-level military officers to rank-and-file enlisted personnel, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) integrates national security, intelligence operations and “united front” efforts into a dense network to conduct intelligence gathering and espionage in Taiwan, Tsai said at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee. It uses specific networks to screen targets through exchange activities and recruiting local collaborators to establish intelligence-gathering organizations, he said. China is also shifting who it targets to lower-ranking military personnel,
RSS