The Ministry of the Interior released the country’s first Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) report yesterday, saying that efforts are still needed to promote gender equality in the labor market.
“The data we used for the report were collected from different government institutions over a period of almost a year. With the participation of experts from various fields, we analyzed the information we gathered through numerous meetings and in-depth research to complete the report,” Minister of the Interior Liao Liou-yi (廖了以) said at a press conference. “Many government institutions also put efforts in writing the report and it has helped them to get an idea of the current human rights conditions for women in the country and how to develop future policies.”
Taiwan’s first CEDAW report said that gender equality in the job market still needed improvement.
“Many women face illegal reduction in salary, transfer or dismissal because of childbirth or baby-nursing,” the report said. “It is also common to find unfair salary and promotion opportunities for women in the job market.”
Although gender equality laws have long been in place, discrimination is still very common because of deep-rooted traditional concepts, the report said, recommending the government put in more efforts to promote equality.
“We also call on government institutions with large gaps in the numbers of their male and female employees — such as the military, the coast guard and the police — to create an environment friendly [to women], improve the equality of promotion opportunities and reform their internal employee evaluation systems,” it said.
The convention — which now has 185 signatory countries — was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1979. All signatory countries are required to submit reports on the status of gender equality and efforts to eliminate discrimination every four years.
Following a Legislative Yuan decision, then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) signed the convention in January last year. However, the UN declined to consider Taiwan a CEDAW member.
While Taiwan will not be able to submit its country report to the UN, Liao said that “evaluating conditions of women’s rights according to CEDAW standards is a helpful step toward improving women’s rights in Taiwan.”
In addition to the official country report, some women’s groups in Taiwan began writing their own report last year in the hopes the country can still interact with the international community through exchanges with non-governmental organizations.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater