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.
The Ministry of Education (MOE) is to launch a new program to encourage international students to stay in Taiwan and explore job opportunities here after graduation, Deputy Minister of Education Yeh Ping-cheng (葉丙成) said on Friday. The government would provide full scholarships for international students to further their studies for two years in Taiwan, so those who want to pursue a master’s degree can consider applying for the program, he said. The fields included are science, technology, engineering, mathematics, semiconductors and finance, Yeh added. The program, called “Intense 2+2,” would also assist international students who completed the two years of further studies in
Former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) departed for Europe on Friday night, with planned stops in Lithuania and Denmark. Tsai arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport on Friday night, but did not speak to reporters before departing. Tsai wrote on social media later that the purpose of the trip was to reaffirm the commitment of Taiwanese to working with democratic allies to promote regional security and stability, upholding freedom and democracy, and defending their homeland. She also expressed hope that through joint efforts, Taiwan and Europe would continue to be partners building up economic resilience on the global stage. The former president was to first
Former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on Monday called for greater cooperation between Taiwan, Lithuania and the EU to counter threats to information security, including attacks on undersea cables and other critical infrastructure. In a speech at Vilnius University in the Lithuanian capital, Tsai highlighted recent incidents in which vital undersea cables — essential for cross-border data transmission — were severed in the Taiwan Strait and the Baltic Sea over the past year. Taiwanese authorities suspect Chinese sabotage in the incidents near Taiwan’s waters, while EU leaders have said Russia is the likely culprit behind similar breaches in the Baltic. “Taiwan and our European
The Taipei District Court sentenced babysitters Liu Tsai-hsuan (劉彩萱) and Liu Jou-lin (劉若琳) to life and 18 years in prison respectively today for causing the death of a one-year-old boy in December 2023. The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said that Liu Tsai-hsuan was entrusted with the care of a one-year-old boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), in August 2023 by the Child Welfare League Foundation. From Sept. 1 to Dec. 23 that year, she and her sister Liu Jou-lin allegedly committed acts of abuse against the boy, who was rushed to the hospital with severe injuries on Dec. 24, 2023, but did not