The gender policy stances of the three presidential candidates are mainly empty promises, members of the Awakening Foundation said yesterday in Taipei, while praising the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for supporting same-sex partnership rights for the first time.
“There is a lot to be happy about in this election from the perspective of encouraging women to participate in politics …. but what is interesting is that despite the number of women standing for election, this is the first time in recent memory when presidential candidates have not taken policy stances on feminist or gender issues,” foundation chairperson Chen Yi-chien (陳宜倩) said.
She said the responses from the three presidential campaigns to the foundation’s queries on caregiving, sexual discrimination in the workplace, same-sex partnership rights, pensions and trade had proved disappointing.
“Both the Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] and KMT have been reduced to presenting expansively vague and idealized visions with relatively few specific promises,” she said.
She cited the DPP’s promise to draft legislation governing contract workers without specifying whether its proposals would encourage or discourage the practice.
She also criticized the People First Party for using outdated language in its response and failing to directly address the questions. One bright spot was a KMT statement saying that it supports civil unions, including those for homosexual or lesbian couples, in what activists said was a first, Chen said.
“When I saw [the KMT statement], I thought ‘Wow, you are really brave to say that,’” she said.
The KMT’s stance means that there is now a basic consensus among the major parties on allowing for same-sex civil unions, she said.
DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) might be more progressive than the party’s responses suggested, the activists said, citing a detailed policy white paper on gender issues published during her 2012 presidential campaign.
The foundation members said they would continue to monitor adherence to the parties’ campaign statements after the elections.
National Taiwan University political science professor Huang Chang-ling (黃長玲) said the administrations of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) had promised to allocate a fixed percentage of Cabinet posts to women, but the number of women serving in their administrations dropped progressively over time following Cabinet reshuffles.
While the presence of women on each of the presidential tickets is unprecedented, there is still room for progress, Huang said, adding that gender equality would only be realized when having two women on a presidential ticket is seen as normal.
The foundation was founded after the lifting of martial law to mobilize women and offer social resources to the community.
China appears to have built mockups of a port in northeastern Taiwan and a military vessel docked there, with the aim of using them as targets to test its ballistic missiles, a retired naval officer said yesterday. Lu Li-shih (呂禮詩), a former lieutenant commander in Taiwan’s navy, wrote on Facebook that satellite images appeared to show simulated targets in a desert in China’s Xinjiang region that resemble the Suao naval base in Yilan County and a Kidd-class destroyer that usually docks there. Lu said he compared the mockup port to US naval bases in Yokosuka and Sasebo, Japan, and in Subic Bay
Police are investigating the death of a Formosan black bear discovered on Tuesday buried near an industrial road in Nantou County, with initial evidence indicating that it was shot accidentally by a hunter. The bear had been caught in wildlife traps at least five times before, three times since 2020. Codenamed No. 711, the bear received extensive media coverage last year after it was discovered trapped twice in less than two months in the Taichung mountains. After its most recent ensnarement last month, the bear was released in the Dandashan (丹大山) area in Nantou County’s Sinyi Township (信義). However, officials became concerned after the
DETERRENCE: US National Security Council Indo-Pacific Coordinator Kurt Campbell said cross-strait affairs are on the agenda at the US-ASEAN Special Leaders’ Summit The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday thanked the Czech Senate for passing a resolution supporting Taiwan’s inclusion in the WHO and other international organizations for the second consecutive year. The resolution was passed on Wednesday with 51 votes in favor, one opposed and 11 abstentions. In addition to the WHO, it also called for Taiwan’s participation in the “meetings, mechanisms and activities” of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the International Civil Aviation Organization and Interpol. In its opening, the resolution states that the Czech Republic “considers Taiwan as one of its key partners in the Indo-Pacific region,” while noting its
The majority of parents surveyed in northern Taiwan favor the suspension of all on-site classes at schools from the junior-high level and below amid a surge in domestic COVID-19 infections, parent groups said yesterday. About 84.4 percent of respondents in a survey of 2,912 parents in northern Taiwan, where the outbreak is the most serious, said they supported suspending classes, the Action Alliance on Basic Education, the Taiwan Parents Protect Women and Children Association, and the Taiwan Love Children Association said. The groups distributed questionnaires to parents in New Taipei City, Taipei, Keelung, Taoyuan and Hsinchu city and county from Saturday morning
RSS