Local women's groups yesterday urged female voters to vote for candidates for whom the welfare of women is a genuine priority, and offered advice on how to identify such candidates.
The women cited information published by the Central Election Commission about the last legislative elections in 1998.
They said that of a total of 397 candidates, the platforms of only 198 had included policies on women's welfare issues and that the 176 candidates who were ultimately elected had passed only two bills related to women's welfare over the past three years.
The comments were made at a press conference yesterday held by the Awakening Foundation; the Warm Life Association for Women; the Taiwan chapter of End Child Prostitution Pornography and Trafficking; the Taipei Association for the Promotion of Women's Rights; and the Taipei Awakening Association.
They argued that many candidates try to attract women's votes during elections with platforms that contain policies that target women, but then most of them fail to pursue legislation on women's rights once they are elected.
"We hope female voters will vote for candidates who really care about the well-being of women in the coming election," said Lai Yu-mei (賴友梅), secretary-general of the Awakening Foundation.
"We will then monitor these candidates' performance after they are elected.
The groups offered six tips to help female voters evaluate the candidates' credentials.
They said that the candidate should make practical proposals about women's welfare issues in his or her platform, defend budgets for women's legislation, actively support gender equality bills and oppose violence, vote-buying and prostitution.
Meanwhile, the KMT yesterday released the results of a poll on women's voting intentions. According to the survey 66 percent remain undecided about who to vote for, while 13.9 percent plan to vote for the DPP, the largest number polled by any party, and nine percent have decided to vote for the KMT.
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