Dress code and appearance requirements for female flight attendants are discriminatory and lag a decade behind other nations, the Taoyuan Flight Attendants’ Union said yesterday, as it petitioned the National Human Rights Commission to set clear rules to prevent gender discrimination in the airline industry.
China Airlines, EVA Airways and Starlux Airlines all require female flight attendants to wear pencil skirts, and have rules on makeup and grooming, union executive director Lin Yu-chia (林昱嘉) said while delivering the petition to the commission in Taipei.
Attendants can wear pants during annual safety training, but must wear pencil skirts, high heels and stockings when on duty, which would hamper their ability to respond in an emergency, Lin said.
Photo: Lin Hui-chin, Taipei Times
Gender-neutral uniform options are the norm globally and should be mandated by the commission, she added.
Additionally, although most flight attendants at EVA and China Airlines are women, many return from maternity leave to find that their seniority or performance gains have restarted, they have difficulty getting promotions and some are assigned unreasonable shifts, Lin said.
This unfair treatment makes many flight attendants hesitant to apply for maternity leave, she said.
The reason Taiwanese airlines lag behind other nations in gender equality is because they look at their flight attendants as a product, EVA Air Union chairperson Lee Ying (李瀅) said, adding that the designer who redesigned China Airlines’ uniforms even said they should “be evocative.”
Although people are now paying more attention to gender equality in the workplace, regulations need to be enforceable to keep companies from circumventing them, she added.
The Executive Yuan likes to say that Taiwan leads Asia on gender equality, but its airlines lag far behind its international peers, union secretary-general Chou Sheng-kai (周聖凱) said.
A decade ago, in 2013, Asiana Airlines was the last airline in South Korea to still require its female flight attendants to wear skirts, Chou said.
That same year, the National Human Rights Commission of Korea declared the rule discriminatory, requiring the airline to provide gender-neutral options, he said.
Yet all of Taiwan’s major airlines still maintain this requirement, which is not only highly discriminatory, but runs counter to the spirit of the UN’s Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, he added.
The Executive Yuan in 2014 determined a similar rule among police to be discriminatory, he said, calling on the commission to do the same for flight attendants.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
BREACH OF CONTRACT: The bus operators would seek compensation and have demanded that the manufacturer replace the chips with ones that meet regulations Two bus operators found to be using buses with China-made chips are to demand that the original manufacturers replace the systems and provide compensation for breach of contract, the Veterans Affairs Council said yesterday. Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Michelle Lin (林楚茵) yesterday said that Da Nan Bus Co and Shin-Shin Bus Co Ltd have fielded a total of 82 buses that are using Chinese chips. The bus models were made by Tron-E, while the systems provider was CYE Electronics, Lin said. Lin alleged that the buses were using chips manufactured by Huawei subsidiary HiSilicon Co, which presents a national security risk if the
The National Immigration Agency has banned two Chinese from returning to Taiwan, after they published social media content it described as disrespectful to national sovereignty. The agency imposed a two-month ban on a Chinese man surnamed Liang (梁) and a permanent ban on a woman surnamed Yang (楊), an influencer with 23 million followers, in October last year and last week respectively. Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) yesterday said on the sidelines of a legislative meeting that Chinese visitors to Taiwan are required to comply with the rules and regulations governing their entry permits. The government has handled the ban and
RSS