As many as 37 percent of female employees in Taiwan are the main breadwinners in their household, and about one in three female workers say they do not get enough sleep, a survey by the Council of Labor Affairs showed.
Ahead of International Women’s Day today, the council’s Institute of Occupational Safety and Health published the results of a survey of 23,932 workers (of whom 9,866 were women) about their occupational environment, safety and hygiene conditions.
Contrary to general expectations that men are the principal wage earners in the household, 37 percent of female employees surveyed said they were the main earners in their household, the survey found.
Photo: Chang Chung-yi, Taipei Times
However, the burden of taking care of family members such as children or the elderly did not ease for the women who are the main wage earners, with as many as 14 percent saying they were both the main wage earner and the main caregiver.
This means an estimated 50,000 female workers in Taiwan are responsible for providing much of their family’s income and caregiving in the family, the survey showed.
As they assume both roles, many women said they were afraid this was having a deleterious effect on their health, with 62 percent saying they had experienced muscle pain in the past year.
About one in four female workers said they did not get enough sleep, but that it did not affect their work, while 6 percent said lack of sleep was affecting their work. This was higher than the 24 percent of men who said lack of sleep did not affect their work and 5 percent who said it affected their performance in the workplace.
The survey also showed that despite relatively equal work conditions between the two genders, such as content of work contracts, working hours per week, working days or late shifts and long-term hiring, 41 percent of women felt they could not be their true selves in the workplace, compared with 37 percent of men.
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