Taiwan leads East Asian countries in gender equality of legislatures with the highest ratio of female to male lawmakers, the Executive Yuan’s Gender Equality Committee (GEC) said in a statement yesterday.
Female lawmakers in Taiwan accounted for 41.6 percent of the Legislative Yuan in 2020, and rose to 42.5 percent this month, when Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lin Ching-yi (林靜儀) won a legislative by-election in Taichung’s second district, the committee said.
The updated figure is a new record and places Taiwan ahead of other countries in Asia, including Singapore and South Korea, the committee added.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
The United Arab Emirates has the highest proportion of female lawmakers in Asia (50 percent), and the third-highest in the world, the committee said in its report titled Gender At A Glance in the Republic of China (Taiwan), which it released yesterday.
Aside from an increase in female lawmakers, the proportion of female judges and the proportion of female ministers without portfolio have exceeded 50 percent, the report said.
In 2020, Taiwan also recorded the highest rate of female participation in the workforce in a decade among women aged 45 to 64 — 52.3 percent — while the percentage of women of all ages in the labor force rose by 1.5 percentage points to 51.4 percent from 2010 to 2020, it said.
During the same period, the percentage of men in the labor force rose 0.7 percentage points to 67.2 percent, it added.
In 2020, the average wage gap between male and female workers was 14.8 percent, 0.1 percentage points lower than a year earlier, it said.
However, gender bias remains prevalent in industries historically dominated by men, it said.
For example, in the construction industry, the percentage of registered female architects who applied to open their own firms was 8.46 percent, it said.
Further education and improvement in “personal safety and justice” are also needed, the report said, adding that females were victims in 80.4 percent of the 9,212 sexual assault cases reported in 2020.
Since 2020, the percentage of sexual assaults with female victims has increased, with 70 percent of sexual harassment and assault cases on school campuses involving women, it said.
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck off the coast of Hualien County in eastern Taiwan at 7pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The epicenter of the temblor was at sea, about 69.9km south of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 30.9km, it said. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County’s Changbin Township (長濱), where it measured 5 on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 4 in Hualien, Nantou, Chiayi, Yunlin, Changhua and Miaoli counties, as well as
Taiwan is to have nine extended holidays next year, led by a nine-day Lunar New Year break, the Cabinet announced yesterday. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday next year matches the length of this year’s holiday, which featured six extended holidays. The increase in extended holidays is due to the Act on the Implementation of Commemorative and Festival Holidays (紀念日及節日實施條例), which was passed early last month with support from the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party. Under the new act, the day before Lunar New Year’s Eve is also a national holiday, and Labor Day would no longer be limited
COMMITMENTS: The company had a relatively low renewable ratio at 56 percent and did not have any goal to achieve 100 percent renewable energy, the report said Pegatron Corp ranked the lowest among five major final assembly suppliers in progressing toward Apple Inc’s commitment to be 100 percent carbon neutral by 2030, a Greenpeace East Asia report said yesterday. While Apple has set the goal of using 100 percent renewable energy across its entire business, supply chain and product lifecycle by 2030, carbon emissions from electronics manufacturing are rising globally due to increased energy consumption, it said. Given that carbon emissions from its supply chain accounted for more than half of its total emissions last year, Greenpeace East Asia evaluated the green transition performance of Apple’s five largest final
The first tropical storm of the year in the western North Pacific, Wutip (蝴蝶), has formed over the South China Sea and is expected to move toward Hainan Island off southern China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. The agency said a tropical depression over waters near the Paracel and Zhongsha islands strengthened into a tropical storm this morning. The storm had maximum sustained winds near its center of 64.8kph, with peak gusts reaching 90kph, it said. Winds at Beaufort scale level 7 — ranging from 50kph to 61.5kph — extended up to 80km from the center, it added. Forecaster Kuan Hsin-ping
RSS