Amid complaints from women citing discrimination in recruiting practices at the postal service, officials for the organization have defended their stance, pointing to both physical concerns and complaints from men competing for the same jobs.
Representatives from three women's groups Thursday staged a protest outside the Directorate General of the Post (DGP
Yelling "I'm a woman, and I want to be a postal carrier too!" a group of about 20 people from the non-governmental Awakening Foundation (
The limit was set at 41 slots for women out of 500 overall positions to be filled. Of the 41 positions for women, 26 are in Taipei City, nine in Taipei County, and six in Taoyuan County.
Yen Yung-teng (
According to Yen, they did not intend to recruit any women at all, but the Ministry of Transportation and Communications instructed the postal service to include women or risk violating the "Workplace Gender Equality Law" (
The DGP currently has 8,000 postal carriers islandwide, of which 400 are women.
Peng Yen-wen (
"It violates the fifth article of the Employment Services Act (
The exam had drawn over 30,000 registrants for 500 slots by the Oct. 18 deadline. Peng said they would like to see the DGP cancel the limitation and extend the registration deadline.
"It's not possible," Yen said. "The postal exam is a national exam whose examination date and qualification have been approved by the Examination Yuan. We [the DGP] have no right to make any alterations," he said. "Besides, if we adjust the quota now, we might receive complaints from men. What are we going to do then?"
Yen maintained the quota is in effect because of women's physical abilities. "We think it's harder for a woman to handle a motorbike along with a heavy mail bag which can weigh as much as 50kg to 60kg," he said. "Besides, women tend to be more accident-prone and less aggressive when driving."
Peng disagreed. "There are a lot of physically strong women out there. Why not hold a physical ability test before the exam to see how many women are physically fit for the job, instead of setting the limits beforehand?"
Yen also said women pose problems at the workplace.
"We have many smart women out there but we cannot keep them for long because they don't seem able to stand the pressure of the work as much as men," he said.
"Of course we can use more women, the problem is they are not efficient enough, which puts us in financial difficulty if we have to pay them extra for working overtime," Yen concluded.
In response to the quota dispute, the Bureau of Labor Affairs (勞工局) from the Taipei City Government sent two officials to the DGP to learn more about the situation.
Wang Tse-ping (
"The material will be sent later to the Employment Discrimination Arbitration Board (
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