Government officials leapt to defend President’s Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) record on women’s issues yesterday, defending Ma against accusations from female Democratic Progressive Party legislators and women’s rights groups that he had delivered on less than half of his campaign promises.
Speaking to a press conference at the Government Information Office yesterday, Research, Development and Evaluation Commission Minister Chu Chin-peng (朱景鵬) dismissed the allegations.
“Three of President Ma’s twelve campaign promises in relation to women are already in place. The government has also made substantial progress in advancing four of the other nine,” Chu said.
Personnel Administration Minister Wu Tai-cheng (吳泰成) said that the government was close to raising the percentage of female Cabinet officials to one-quarter within four years and one-third in eight years.
“The percentage of female Cabinet officials has increased to 20 percent, up from 12.5 percent before Ma assumed office,” Wu said.
In related news, Council of Labor Affairs Minister Jennifer Wang (王如玄) yesterday rejected criticism that the government’s proposed maternity policy that would allow working women to take pregnancy leave for up to one year would turn out to be “pie in the sky.”
“As long as it is the right thing to do, the government has to stick to it,” Wang said.
Other welfare measures that protect the interests of women were also considered unrealistic when first implemented but eventually worked well, she said.
Citing subsidies for female workers on six-month unpaid infant care leave introduced in May, Wang said that about 26,000 women had applied for the leave as of last year, much higher than the average of 3,000 working women who took such leave before the policy was implemented.
“There were also concerns that the subsidy would be just another fantasy, but there has been an increase in the number of workers choosing to take such leave,” Wang said.
Meanwhile, employers found discriminating against female workers returning to work after pregnancy leave can be fined up to NT$500,000 (US$15,650), she said.
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