More Taiwanese women are making advances in their fields, knocking down barriers to gender equality in a patriarchal society, but there are still some challenges, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday on International Women’s Day.
A World Bank women’s empowerment study ranked Taiwan as the top Asian country in terms of legally guaranteed women’s rights, Tsai wrote on Facebook.
In the report Women, Business and the Law 2019: A Decade of Reform, Taiwan scored full marks in five of the eight indices, Tsai said, attributing the result to the efforts of the women’s rights movement and the public’s hard work.
Photo: CNA
The study examines laws and regulations affecting women’s prospects as entrepreneurs and employees in 187 economies worldwide over the past 10 years.
The eight topics covered by the report include “going places,” “starting a job,” “getting paid,” “getting married,” “having children,” “running a business,” “managing assets” and “getting a pension.”
However, despite advances toward gender equality in Taiwan, women still face many challenges, Tsai wrote.
“At home, male siblings seem to always inherit the family’s property and name,” she wrote. “At school, girls are often said to be bad at math, physics and chemistry.”
Stereotyping also persists in the workplace in Taiwan, she said.
“In the workplace, you are asked to wear makeup and a pencil skirt,” she said. “Your boss calls you inattentive when you have to juggle a busy home life, children and a job.”
In spite of that, more women are making advances in their fields, breaking down barriers and achieving exceptional results, Tsai said.
She said one of her main hopes is to see the removal of gender labels.
“I hope that one day people would refer to me as a president, rather than a female president,” she said. “Gender should not be a factor in assessing an individual’s performance.”
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