Taiwan ranks first in Asia and eighth worldwide in gender equality, due mainly to its higher female participation in politics, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The agency came up with the rankings using the criteria in the gender inequality index (GII) introduced by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in 2010.
The GII is a composite index that measures the disparity between female and male achievements in three areas: reproductive health, empowerment and the labor market.
It ranges from zero — which indicates that women and men fare equally — to 1 — which indicates that women fare as poorly as possible in all three areas.
Since Taiwan is not a member of the UN, it is not ranked in the GII.
However, using the index’s criteria, the DGBAS calculated Taiwan’s score in 2017 at 0.056, placing it eighth worldwide and first in Asia.
In the UNDP’s 2017 GII, Sweden ranked first among 160 nations with a score of 0.039, followed by Denmark with 0.040, and Switzerland and the Netherlands tied in third place at 0.044.
In terms of empowerment, Taiwan’s female participation in politics has been on the rise, the DGBAS said.
Taiwanese women held 38.1 percent of the legislative seats in 2017, up 16.9 percentage points from 2007, and the female-to-male ratio in the legislature was higher than that in other Asian countries, including Singapore, China, South Korea and Japan, the DGBAS said.
The labor force participation rate in Taiwan for women aged 15 and above was 50.9 percent in 2017, 16.2 percentage points lower than that for men, but the gender gap was smaller than that of Singapore, Japan and South Korea, the agency said.
Furthermore, women took 16.7 percent of the mayoral seats in the nation’s six special municipalities in last year’s local elections, the same as in the 2014 poll, it said.
As for the other 16 cities and counties, women held 37.5 percent of the mayoral and commissioner seats, an increase of 31.2 percentage points from 2014 and marking the first time the rate went past one-third since 1997, the DGBAS said.
Rainfall is expected to become more widespread and persistent across central and southern Taiwan over the next few days, with the effects of the weather patterns becoming most prominent between last night and tomorrow, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Independent meteorologist Daniel Wu (吳德榮) said that based on the latest forecast models of the combination of a low-pressure system and southwesterly winds, rainfall and flooding are expected to continue in central and southern Taiwan from today to Sunday. The CWA also warned of flash floods, thunder and lightning, and strong gusts in these areas, as well as landslides and fallen
WAITING GAME: The US has so far only offered a ‘best rate tariff,’ which officials assume is about 15 percent, the same as Japan, a person familiar with the matter said Taiwan and the US have completed “technical consultations” regarding tariffs and a finalized rate is expected to be released soon, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference yesterday, as a 90-day pause on US President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs is set to expire today. The two countries have reached a “certain degree of consensus” on issues such as tariffs, nontariff trade barriers, trade facilitation, supply chain resilience and economic security, Lee said. They also discussed opportunities for cooperation, investment and procurement, she said. A joint statement is still being negotiated and would be released once the US government has made
SOUTH CHINA SEA? The Philippine president spoke of adding more classrooms and power plants, while skipping tensions with China over disputed areas Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday blasted “useless and crumbling” flood control projects in a state of the nation address that focused on domestic issues after a months-long feud with his vice president. Addressing a joint session of congress after days of rain that left at least 31 dead, Marcos repeated his recent warning that the nation faced a climate change-driven “new normal,” while pledging to investigate publicly funded projects that had failed. “Let’s not pretend, the people know that these projects can breed corruption. Kickbacks ... for the boys,” he said, citing houses that were “swept away” by the floods. “Someone has
‘CRUDE’: The potential countermeasure is in response to South Africa renaming Taiwan’s representative offices and the insistence that it move out of Pretoria Taiwan is considering banning exports of semiconductors to South Africa after the latter unilaterally downgraded and changed the names of Taiwan’s two representative offices, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday. On Monday last week, the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation unilaterally released a statement saying that, as of April 1, the Taipei Liaison Offices in Pretoria and Cape Town had been renamed the “Taipei Commercial Office in Johannesburg” and the “Taipei Commercial Office in Cape Town.” Citing UN General Assembly Resolution 2758, it said that South Africa “recognizes the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the sole