Print

Mail

wiki links

Working women better off than in 2004: labor council

In honor of International Women's Day on Saturday, the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) yesterday released a series of surveys on working women.

Overall, the surveys suggest that Taiwan is becoming a better place for women to work, a change the council credited, at least in part, to the enactment of the Gender Equality Employment Law (性別工作平等法) in 2002.

"Although we cannot say for sure that the whole of the change is because of the law, we can see working conditions for women clearly moving in a positive direction," said Chen Yu-fang (陳玉芳), who works in the council's statistics department.

Of women surveyed in 2004, 9.5 percent said that gender discrimination adversely affected their salary.

In results from a similar survey conducted in December that figure had dropped to 5.6 percent. There were also lower percentages of women who said that they had suffered gender discrimination in terms of promotions and benefits.

A survey of employers showed that more workplaces have been compliant with the Gender Equality Employment Law in allowing women to take sick days for severe menstrual cramps and abortions. More employers were also providing birthing leave for husbands and leave for those needing to look after family members.

The compliance rate for the leaves mandated by the law, however, was still below 50 percent, the surveys showed.

Council Chairman Lu Tien-lin (盧天麟) said at a press conference yesterday that it was the aim of the council to increase the wages and benefits of women workers, end workplace gender discrimination, strengthen the social safety net for women and increase their employment opportunities.

Lu said the top policy goal was to amend the Employment Insurance Law (就業保險法) to include benefits for those taking maternity or paternity leave and to amend the Labor Insurance Law (勞工保險條例) to increase maternity benefits from one months' salary to three months salary.

However, legislation can only go so far in leveling the playing field, he said, calling upon companies to cooperate and help reach the goal of gender equality in the workplace.
This story has been viewed 1432 times.