President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday encouraged women to become whoever they want to be, while expressing her hope that the media would stop using the term “strong women” to describe those with successful careers.
Tsai made the remarks in a video recorded for a forum held by the Ministry of Health and Welfare in Taipei to mark International Women’s Day tomorrow.
Over the past few years, the nation has seen many women working hard in their professions and challenging gender stereotypes in various industries, Tsai said.
For example, an increasing number of women work as soldiers, police officers and firefighters, protecting the public and their property, no matter how tough the missions are, she said.
Numerous female physicians, pharmacists, healthcare professionals and researchers have made significant contributions to the nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, she added.
Tsai said that she hopes the “successful woman” would not become just another gender stereotype, but a natural part of society.
One day, people will hopefully no longer hear “strong women” in the media to describe women with successful careers, she said.
The government should implement more measures to break gender stereotypes and promote gender equality, she added.
The theme of the forum this year was the “courage” of women in Taiwan in facing various challenges and meeting the needs of life’s different stages.
Six female panelists with different backgrounds were invited to discuss issues such as postpartum care and childcare, the reproductive rights of women with disabilities, widowed women living alone, and elderly women in retirement.
In his opening speech, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said that despite the vast majority of attendees at the day’s events being women, he believed more men should attend to better understand the topics.
“Women have the courage to be persistent; to not give up, to be positive; to explore all of the possible ways to achieve a desired solution; and to be gentle,” he said. “Gentleness is an excellent trait found in many women, but it should be found in men, too.”
Some goals cannot be met by an insistence on forcing one’s way through, Chen said, adding that showing some gentleness and reason might open up new possibilities for progress.
“The power of gentleness is key to our impressive performance in fighting the virus,” he said.
Many healthcare workers and employees at centralized care facilities are women who have shown that difficult situations can be solved through compassionate care, rather than tough discipline and punishments, Chen said.
Asked how he defines “courage,” Chen said that courage comes from caring — such as for human beings or for nature — because when people care about someone or something, they find the strength to help or improve a situation.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods