Taiwan has published its fourth country report for the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the Executive Yuan said yesterday, adding that the results show that 70 percent of domestic violence victims in Taiwan between 2017 and 2020 were women.
Taiwan has submitted more country reports to CEDAW than to any other international organization, Executive Yuan spokesman Lo Ping-cheng (羅秉成) told a news conference in Taipei.
The reports show how women’s rights and gender equality have progressed in Taiwan between 2017 and 2020, he said.
Photo courtesy of the Executive Yuan via CNA
While only 110,000 domestic violence incidents were reported in 2017, the incidents reported from 2018 to 2020 totaled more than 120,000 per year, Lo said.
Abuse between partners — couples who are married, divorced or living together — comprised half of all reported cases, with 83 percent of the victims being women, Lo said.
In 2020, there were 860 counts of violence among same-sex couples, 37 percent of which were lesbians and 63 percent gay men, Lo said.
Violence between same-sex partners accounted for 1.6 percent of total reports, he added.
Compared with Taiwan’s previous reports, there was an increase in domestic violence, but the percentage of female victims was unchanged, Lo said.
Convinced that abuse between partners often results from gender inequality, the Executive Yuan in April 2020 proposed adding the phrase “based on gender equality” to Article 2, Item 2 of the Domestic Violence Prevention Act (家庭暴力防治法), and proposed changing Article 59 so that prevention classes for domestic violence would teach about gender equality.
The Executive Yuan has also proposed changing Article 50 so that the government would need a victim’s consent to intervene in a domestic situation, unless the victim is in immediate danger or other legal issues apply.
The Executive Yuan’s gender equality mailbox, which accepts any complaint about gender discrimination, received 365 complaints between 2017 and 2020, of which about half were made by women.
The latest report shows an increase in the number of men complaining of abuse and a rise in complaints about online gender discrimination, the Executive Yuan said.
Taiwan has made great strides in gender equality over the past four years, such as being the first Asian country to allow same-sex marriage, but the rise in online gender discrimination shows that the nation has a lot of work left to do, Lo said.
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