A study coauthored by Taiwanese economist Lin Ming-jen (林明仁) that examines long-term care needs and women in the workplace has won this year’s APEC Healthy Women, Healthy Economies Research Prize.
The winner was announced during a virtual Women and the Economy Forum on Friday last week.
The study, titled “How Much Do Long-Term Care Needs Affect Female Labor Supply?”, has yet to be formally published, Lin told the Taipei Times by telephone yesterday.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Science and Technology
The researchers used regression analysis and event study methods to analyze government data from 2008 to 2019 on taxes, labor insurance, disability insurance and foreign caregiver applications, he said.
Married daughters are 15 percent less likely to participate in the labor market than married sons when parents have long-term care needs, Lin said.
Daughters, not sons, are typically the major caregivers for sick or aging parents, he said, adding that this is the perpetuation of a common stereotype in Asian countries, where men are thought to be superior to women.
To care for a sick parent, many women leave the workplace or choose a less challenging job, and they usually have difficulty returning to the workplace, even after the parent dies and their caregiving responsibilities are finished, Lin said.
Men and women aged 25 to 30 have similar workforce participation rates, but the gap widens after age 30, the research showed.
The study was commissioned in late 2019 by the Executive Yuan’s Department of Gender Equality, Lin said, expressing the hope that it would lead to an evidence-based evaluation of labor policy in Taiwan.
In January last year, Lin left his post as a professor in National Taiwan University’s Department of Economics to begin a three-year term as director-general of the Ministry of Science and Technology’s Department of Humanities and Social Sciences.
The study’s other authors were Lin’s students. Chen Kuan-ming (陳冠銘) is a post-doctoral fellow at the US’ National Bureau of Economic Research and Hsiang Chen-wei (項振緯) is a doctoral student at University College London.
“Unpaid care work, which disproportionately falls on women’s shoulders, is vital for societies to function,” Renee Graham, chair of APEC’s Policy Partnership on Women and the Economy, said in the news release announcing the winning study yesterday.
“If we are to build back better and build back more inclusively, we must find ways to support the women who perform the majority of this labor — often without recognition or full appreciation for the important work they are doing,” she said.
The research prize winner was awarded US$20,000, while the two runners-up — from China and Singapore — received US$5,000 each, APEC said.
EVA Airways today confirmed the death of a flight attendant on Saturday upon their return to Taiwan and said an internal investigation has been launched, as criticism mounted over a social media post accusing the airline of failing to offer sufficient employee protections. According to the post, the flight attendant complained of feeling sick on board a flight, but was unable to take sick leave or access medical care. The crew member allegedly did not receive assistance from the chief purser, who failed to heed their requests for medical attention or call an ambulance once the flight landed, the post said. As sick
A drunk woman was sexually assaulted inside a crowded concourse of Taipei Railway Station on Thursday last week before a foreign tourist notified police, leading to calls for better education on bystander intervention and review of security infrastructure. The man, surnamed Chiu (邱), was taken into custody on charges of sexual assault, taking advantage of the woman’s condition and public indecency. Police discovered that Chiu was a fugitive with prior convictions for vehicle theft. He has been taken into custody and is to complete his unserved six-month sentence, police said. On Thursday last week, Chiu was seen wearing a white
The Taichung District Court yesterday confirmed its final ruling that the marriage between teenage heir Lai (賴) and a man surnamed Hsia (夏) was legally invalid, preventing Hsia from inheriting Lai’s NT$500 million (US$16.37 million) estate. The court confirmed that Hsia chose not to appeal the civil judgement after the court handed down its ruling in June, making the decision final. In the June ruling, the court said that Lai, 18, and Hsia, 26, showed “no mutual admiration before the marriage” and that their interactions were “distant and unfamiliar.” The judge concluded that the couple lacked the “true intention of
EVA Airways, one of the leading international carriers in Taiwan, yesterday said that it was investigating reports that a cabin crew manager had ignored the condition of a sick flight attendant, who died on Saturday. The airline made the statement in response to a post circulating on social media that said that the flight attendant on an outbound flight was feeling sick and notified the cabin crew manager. Although the flight attendant grew increasingly ill on the return flight, the manager did not contact Medlink — a system that connects the aircraft to doctors on the ground for treatment advice during medical
RSS