The importance of mainstreaming the gender perspective into all policies was acknowledged by President Chen Shui-bian (
"Undoubtedly, Taiwan's society is constructed by traditional concepts regarding male superiority over women. In order to fulfill our gender-equality objective, we need sufficient manpower and budget to develop strategies to ensure people have a real understanding of gender issues," Chen said.
Gender mainstreaming -- which means integrating the gender equality objective into community policies -- was first addressed in 1985.
PHOTO: WANG YI-SUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
At the UN's Fourth World Conference on Women, which was held in Beijing in 1995, participants and the UN agreed to promote the "mainstreaming" of a gender perspective in policies and programs.
Yesterday, Chen called on the Executive Yuan to incorporate gender mainstreaming ideas into policies, including population planning.
According to Chen Hui-shing (
"Taiwanese people need to have a greater understanding of gender issues, because more people here face difficulties in getting married. Advertisements for foreign-spouse matchmaking agents have words which devalue women in poorer countries and discriminate against Taiwanese women as well," Chen Hui-shing said.
In a report presented by Liu Chung-tung (
The rate in 2003, 0.29 percent, was already higher than that of several countries, including Germany, Japan, China and Singapore.
Liu said that young people in Taiwan have limited abilities to establish intimate relationships based on equality.
"If traditional values stressing male superiority over women remain dominant, in the future we will see more intercultural marriages between Taiwanese men and women from developing countries, as well as more domestic violence," Liu said in her report.
Another task force member, attorney Yu Mei-nu (尤美女), said that the idea of "having a son to carry on the family name" remains dominant in Taiwan but women should not be treated as a tool by the government to control the population.
The task force will look into the relationship between gender mainstreaming and other issues, including development, human rights and cultural diversity.
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A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching