Taiwan ranks first in Asia and sixth in the world for gender equality, according to a self-assessment published on Tuesday by the Executive Yuan’s Gender Equality Committee.
The committee said that its rankings were based on the Gender Inequality Index introduced in 2010 by the UN Development Programme.
The composite index measures inequality between female and male achievement in three areas — reproductive health, empowerment and the labor market.
The index ranges from 0, which indicates that men and women fare equally, to 1, which indicates that women fare poorly.
As Taiwan is not a member of the UN, it does not appear in the official rankings.
However, by applying the criteria from the index, the committee calculated that Taiwan’s 2019 reading was 0.045, placing it sixth worldwide and first in Asia.
In the 2019 ratings, Switzerland was first with a score of 0.025, followed by Denmark (0.038) and Sweden (0.039), it said in a report.
In Asia, Taiwan’s rating was better than South Korea’s (0.064, No. 12 worldwide), Singapore’s (0.065, No. 13) and Japan’s (0.094, No. 25), the committee said.
The labor force participation rate for women aged 15 or older in Taiwan was 51.4 percent, compared with 67.3 percent for men, it said.
Despite the gap, female participation grew at nearly double the rate of men over the prior 10 years, it said.
In terms of pay difference, women made 14.2 percent less than men in 2019 — an average of NT$291 per hour compared with NT$340 for men — which was a 3.7 percentage point improvement from a 17.9 percent gap 10 years earlier, it said.
The report said that gender stereotypes, such as ideas that men should study science while women should study the arts, can have long-lasting effects on gender segregation in the workplace.
For example, the proportion of female professional researchers in Taiwan — 22.6 percent — is higher than in South Korea and Japan, but remains significantly lower than the UK (38.6 percent) and Finland (33.7 percent), the committee said.
Fewer than 25 percent of Taiwanese workers in the construction, home improvement and transportation sectors are women, the committee said.
In the transportation sector, the Taipei MRT rail system had the highest proportion of female drivers at 22.5 percent, while the Taiwan Railways Administration had the lowest at 1.2 percent, the report said.
Taiwan passed a marriage equality law in May 2019, under which 1,257 male couples and 2,830 female couples were married in the first year since its enactment, it said.
Seven of the 17 NT$10 million (US$311,604) winning receipts from the November-December uniform invoice lottery remain unclaimed as of today, the Ministry of Finance said, urging winners to redeem their prizes by May 5. The reminder comes ahead of the release of the winning numbers for the January-February lottery tomorrow. Among the unclaimed receipts was one for a NT$173 phone bill in Keelung, while others were for a NT$5,913 purchase at Costco in Taipei's Neihu District (內湖), a NT$49 purchase at a FamilyMart in New Taipei City's Tamsui District (淡水), and a NT$500 purchase at a tea shop in New Taipei City's
Taiwanese officials were shown the first of 66 F-16V fighter jets purchased by Taiwan from the United States, the Ministry of National Defense said yesterday, adding the aircraft has completed an initial flight test and is expected to be delivered later this year. A delegation led by Deputy Minister of National Defense Hsu Szu-chien (徐斯儉) visited Lockheed Martin’s F-16 C/D Block 70 (also known as F-16V) assembly line in South Carolina on March 16 to view the aircraft. The jet will undergo a final acceptance flight in the US before being delivered to Taiwan, the
The New Taipei Metro's Sanyin Line and the eastern extension of the Taipei Metro's Tamsui-Xinyi Line (Red Line) are scheduled to begin operations in June, the National Development Council said today. The Red Line, which terminates at Xiangshan Station, would be connected by the 1.4km extension to a new eastern terminal, Guangci/Fengtian Temple Station, while the Sanyin Line would link New Taipei City's Tucheng and Yingge stations via Sanxia District (三峽). The council gave the updates at a council meeting reviewing progress on public construction projects for this year. Taiwan's annual public infrastructure budget would remain at NT$800 billion (US$25.08 billion), with NT$97.3
TALENT SCOUTING: The university is investing substantial funds in its future to bring in the kind of researchers that would keep the college internationally competitive National Taiwan University (NTU) plans to invest NT$2 billion (US$62.6 million) to launch two programs aimed at attracting and retaining top research talent, university president Chen Wen-chang (陳文章) said yesterday. The funding would support the “Palm Grove Scholars Project,” which targets academics aged 40 to 55. Up to 20 scholars would be selected, each receiving as much as NT$10 million annually, Chen said. The initiative is designed to attract leading researchers to Taiwan and strengthen NTU’s global competitiveness by fostering a more research-friendly environment and expanding international collaboration, he said. NTU is also introducing a “Hong Hu” chair grant, which would provide Palm
RSS