The Executive Yuan yesterday published this year’s Gender at a Glance report, which used indicators in the UN’s Gender Inequality Index and found that, if it were included in the index, Taiwan would be the top Asian nation in terms of gender equality and rank ninth in the world.
The results were derived after incorporating the five indicators of three areas of the index: health, empowerment and labor market, the Executive Yuan’s Gender Equality Committee said.
In 2015, Taiwan’s maternal mortality ratio was 12 deaths per 100,000 births, which was very close to that of Singapore and South Korea at 10 and 11 deaths per 100,000 births respectively, the committee said.
Japan’s ratio that year was five deaths per 100,000 births, while China’s was 27 deaths per 100,000 births, it said.
In 2018, Taiwan’s adolescent birthrate was 0.4 percent, close to Japan’s 0.38 percent and Singapore’s 0.35 percent, but notably higher than South Korea’s 0.14 percent and Switzerland’s 0.28 percent, it added.
In terms of “female and male shares of parliamentary seats,” 38.7 percent of seats in the Legislative Yuan were held by women in 2018, besting Singapore, Japan, South Korea and China, all of which had less than 25 percent, it said.
In the “female and male population with at least secondary education” indicator, 90.1 percent of Taiwanese men had completed a secondary education or higher degree in 2018, which was 8.4 percentage points more than women that year, it added.
As for “female and male labor force participation rates,” 51.1 percent of women aged 15 or older were part of the nation’s workforce in 2018, compared with 67.2 percent of men, the committee said.
The 16.1 percentage point gap was close to Singapore’s 15.8 percentage points and much smaller than Japan’s 19.3 percentage points and South Korea’s 20.5 percentage points, it said.
Overall, Taiwan would have scored 0.053 — with lower scores signaling greater equality — and ranked ninth worldwide had it been included in the index, outperforming some developed nations such as Germany (0.084) and Iceland (0.057), the committee said.
Switzerland was ranked highest in the gender equality index with a score of 0.037, followed by Denmark and Sweden sharing second at 0.040, it said.
The Netherlands was fourth at 0.041, the committee said, adding that South Korea was 11th at 0.058, Japan ranked 24th at 0.099 and China was 40th with 0.163.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS