A coalition of LGBTQ+ advocacy and student groups yesterday called on universities to improve gender-neutral bathroom access, living accommodations and policies to foster more gender-friendly campus environments.
The groups, in collaboration with student organizations, held a news conference on International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia yesterday to share the results of their report on gender-related issues on university campuses.
The report focused on five areas: gender designations on school records, bathrooms, dormitories, curricula and campus atmosphere.
The seven participating schools were National Taiwan University (NTU), National Pingtung University of Science and Technology (NPUST), Soochow University, National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), Kaohsiung Medical University, National Sun Yat-sen University and National Tsing Hua University.
Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights (TAPCPR) convener Victoria Hsu (許秀雯) said she hopes the report could help schools identify which areas need improvement to become more welcoming to transgender and gender nonconforming people.
The report found a serious shortage of bathrooms in terms of quantity and accessibility, with 45 gender-neutral options at the seven schools combined.
Individually, they ranged from having only one to 14, showing that many campus buildings lack accessible bathrooms, the groups said.
As many transgender and queer people fear seeing someone they know or encountering a hostile situation when using a toilet, it is common for them to avoid using public restrooms altogether, Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association director of policy advocacy Olivia Tsai (蔡瑩芝) said.
Plentiful and accessible toilets are important to ensuring the rights of gender nonconforming students and educators, Tsai added.
All seven universities require that the gender on a student’s university ID matches the gender printed on their national ID, although many university IDs no longer display gender, the report said.
National Tsing Hua University, in particular, has taken gender fields off many school documents, including the student ID and transcripts, it found.
NCKU has removed gender from all documents except for transcripts.
All schools should remove unnecessary gender fields from their forms, TAPCPR policy director Fang Chi (方綺) said, adding that when it is necessary, it should be unlinked from the national ID to avoid outing students.
In addition, many physical education courses overemphasize gender differences, which reinforces gender stereotypes rather than promote physical health, Taiwan Gender Equity Education Association secretary-general Hang Yi-chen (韓宜臻) said.
Students should be grouped by ability, not gender, Hang added.
None of the seven schools have set up gender-neutral dormitories, and instead enforce strict gender segregation rules “when convenient,” the report said.
Student experiences at NTU, NCKU and Soochow University show that the fewer gender checks a school conducts in its dorms, the more likely it is to accommodate transgender students, the report said.
In terms of overall campus atmosphere, the groups investigated eight metrics, including gender-related campus events, availability of counseling and presence of gender-oriented student groups.
They found there is generally not much interest in discussing gender issues on campus, with only NCKU and NPUST holding annual campuswide events on transgender issues.
The report was jointly written by the TAPCPR, Humanistic Education Foundation, Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association, Taiwan Gender Equity Education Association and the Taiwan Youth Association for Democracy.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS