An equal opportunities office will be established under the Executive Yuan as part of the government’s efforts to protect and boost women’s rights, Minister of the Interior Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) said yesterday.
Measures to boost sexual equality and equal employment opportunities, and solve issues like gender discrimination at work, were integrated last month as important guidelines on which the government will base its policies in this area, Jiang said.
The planned office will be an executive arm for equal opportunities policies, he said in a speech at a ceremony marking the 61st founding anniversary of the National Women’s League of the Republic of China.
The issue of women’s rights and equality has changed as times have changed, he said, pointing out that men can now take maternity leave.
The National Women’s League was established in 1950 by Soong Meiling (宋美齡), the wife of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), and the wives of a number of civil servants and entrepreneurs.
The league made clothes and provided daily necessities to soldiers in service, organized visits to cheer up frontline soldiers and provided services for soldiers’ families.
Early in the 1970s, Soong set up 22 overseas branches of the league to provide medicine and financial aid to countries in need. In the 1990s, the organization switched its role to focus on social welfare.
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
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