“Woman power is rising up in Taiwan,” said a recent government report, which showed that more women are becoming the main income earners in their households and that they have slightly higher disposable incomes than households where men are the main earners.
Women are the main income earners in 2.51 million households, about 30 percent of the nation’s total households, with an average disposable income of NT$332,000 (US$11,000) per family member, the figures from last year compiled by Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) showed.
With the developing economy and changing values in Taiwan, women’s socioeconomic status has improved considerably, along with their participation in the workforce, resulting in women holding greater power in Taiwanese society, National Development Council Deputy Minister Kao Shien-quey (高仙桂) said.
“The growth rate for women’s participation in the workforce is still slow. The government plans to invest more in public programs for childcare and healthcare for the elderly. This would alleviate the burden on many female providers, easing their concerns and the pressures of being in the workplace,” Kao said.
“In recent years, our government has assisted more women to become entrepreneurs and run small to medium-sized enterprises. This has allowed women to succeed through diligent effort, to increase their competitiveness and to spark creative innovation in business,” she said.
Kao said the trend is for society to become a “digital economy,” which would encourage more women to study science and engineering and to work in the information, computer and telecommunication technology sectors, boosting growth and inclusiveness in those industries.
Taiwan had a total of 8.458 million households last year, an increase of 0.9 percent — or 72,000 households — from 2015, a DGBAS report showed.
Women headed about 2.51 million of these households, an increase of 827,000 households with a growth rate of 6.6 percent compared with a decade ago, the data showed.
“Although men still make up the majority of main income earners in families, this is a declining trend, as women are increasingly taking over that role,” Kao said.
The statistics showed a U-shaped distribution pattern for the population structure of the households headed by women, with 38.8 percent being women under the age of 25, 34.8 percent being seniors aged 65 and over, and 24.4 percent being women aged 35 to 44.
Compared with a decade ago, the under-25 category declined by about 9 percent, but all other age groups saw an increase, with the largest being an 8.6 percent increase among women 65 years of age and over, the report showed.
The report said that households where women are the main income earners tended to have more disposable income last year because they averaged 2.5 family members instead of the 3.3 family members in the households headed by men.
The survey was conducted using a questionnaire, which asked who the family’s main income earner was, DGBAS officials said, adding that studies were then done to compare trends between male and female main income earners.
The results can be interpreted to mean that more women are entering the workforce and that single women are choosing to become financially independent and to remain unmarried, officials said.
The age pattern shows that when a couple gets married, men still head up the majority of households as the main income earners, while the high proportion of women 65 years of age and over heading up households (34.8 percent) indicates that women are living longer than men, the officials said.
That households headed by women tend to have higher disposable incomes might be because more women are in single-parent situations and because wage levels have been rising for female workers, the officials added.
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