The Executive Yuan yesterday said that regulations and administrative measures in violation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which Taiwan has followed since promulgating it in January 2012, are in the process of being reviewed and revised or retracted.
More than 200 of the reviewed 33,157 regulations and measures have been found in conflict with the convention, and as of November last year, 161 have been amended, 15 annulled, nine are in legislative deliberation and the rest are still being revised, according to the Executive Yuan.
The rules and measures were found to be in conflict with the convention due to their perpetuation of gender stereotypes and a patriarchal system, restrictions to female working rights and property rights, discrimination against women, and violations against women’s autonomy over their bodies.
On securing women’s working rights, government agencies’ differentiating treatment of female and male workers’ overtime — the cap on male employees’ overtime being 46 hours, while it was 32 hours for female employees — has been adjusted; while the restriction that the ratio of females to the total number of land surveying assistants should not surpass 50 percent in Hualien, Changhua, Chiayi and Kinmen counties has been scrapped.
The Ministry of the Interior has removed wording in a regulation that limits female household registration officials’ undertaking of business in “red-light districts and areas not appropriate for female access.”
The Taipei City Government has amended the Self-government Ordinance for Promoting the Employment of Indigenous People, in which it stated that a certain quota is reserved for female Aborigines only when “the job described suits female workers,” to have the quota requirement extended to all jobs.
The Executive Yuan also approved at the end of November a proposal to amend the Police Uniforms Act (警察制服條例) to scrap a regulation requiring female police officers to wear skirts in summer.
According to Article 8 of the CEDAW Enforcement Act (CEDAW施行法), enacted in June 2011 and enforced in 2012, should “there be any [regulations administered by the government bodies] in conflict with the convention, the relevant government unit will complete the enactment of a new rule or regulation, amendment or abolition of the old rule or regulation, and improvement of the administrative measure within three years after this Enforcement Act comes into effect.”
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