Teenage girls should take over a special day to encourage them to break traditional gender boundaries, develop their abilities and to remind the government to create a friendlier environment for them, a women's group and legislators said yesterday.
Led by the Garden of Hope Foundation, a group of teenage girls between the ages of 12 and 16 yesterday participated in a "flash mob," making sudden appearances in Ximending, Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Mall, then at the Legislative Yuan to drum up support for a day of their own by chanting "We want Daughter's Day!"
Foundation director Chi Hui-jung (紀惠容) said the proposal is designed to call on the public to take girls seriously and stop treating them as the second-class sex.
PHOTO: LUO PEI-TEH, TAIPEI TIMES
"Traditionally, Daughter's Day celebrates a girl's transition to womanhood and wishes them luck in finding a good husband. But in fighting for gender equality, we want it to send a more aggressive message, empowering young girls to pursue their dreams," she said.
Although Daughter's Day already exists, the group called for the day to become officially recognized by the government and celebrated by members of the public. They also said the focus of the day should be on empowering girls and women.
In addition to calling for a new kind of Daughter's Day -- traditionally held on the sixth day of the sixth month of the lunar calendar, symbolizing prosperity -- the foundation also urged the government to protect teenage girls' human rights, which is detailed in the Beijing Declaration And Platform For Action from the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995.
Attending the event to accept the petition from the girls, PFP Legislator Li Yong-ping (李永萍), Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Cheng Yun-peng (鄭運鵬) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Huang Chih-hsiung (黃志雄), pledged to support the empowerment of Taiwanese daughters.
"The issue of gender equality needs to be discussed more thoroughly. Apart from a day for Taiwanese daughters, we will push for a gender equality committee in the Legislative Yuan to improve gender equality on every level," Li said.
Chen Yu-ling (陳俞綾), who won the foundation's Formosan Daughters Award for excellent performance in science and technology last year, said that one of the important messages in Daughter's Day is that young women can be successful in what are traditionally considered men's fields.
"I didn't develop an interest in science until high school, because my parents said I should be an accountant. I want to tell them that although I am a girl, I love science and I can excel in the field," said the high school graduate.
Chi said that the foundation looked forward to seeing young girls receive friendly treatment and face no discrimination in school, work and marriage simply because of their gender.
The foundation urged the public to sign their names in support of the Daughter's Day proposal on its Web site at www.goh.org.tw.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods