Taiwan must include gender equality education in teacher training, as a study showed that 61.9 percent of students have heard homophobic remarks from teachers, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Fan Yun (范雲) said on Thursday.
At a news conference cohosted by the Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association at the legislature in Taipei, Fan said that the Ministry of Education should make nondiscrimination against LGBTQ+ students a core part of teacher training.
Department of Student Affairs and Special Education head Hsui Hui-chin (許慧卿) said the ministry is mulling including gender-equality training programs a part of performance metrics for private and public universities.
Photo: CNA
The survey showed that Taiwan has made some progress in making schools friendly to LGBTQ+ students, but many challenges remain, including a lack of teaching materials and teacher training, Fan said.
She urged the government to incorporate gender equality education as a core part of teacher training and conduct official polls to obtain reliable data on discrimination in schools.
The survey on Taiwanese students’ experience with gender and sexual preference-based discrimination revealed that 51.7 percent of respondents have heard the word “gay” being used as a negative term, association representatives said.
Grooming and uniform standards on campus have become more tolerant of transgender students compared with 2020, when the poll was last conducted, they said.
However, transgender students continue to encounter limits in using restrooms, locker rooms and dormitories appropriate for their identified gender, the representatives said.
Although 86.9 percent of schools have implemented anti-discrimination education, only 44.5 percent of the programs included gay equality-related issues, they said.
According to the survey, 14.2 percent of respondents said that their school has policies supporting LGBTQ+ students and 6.4 percent of respondents said student associations at their school are friendly to the LGBTQ+ community, the representatives said.
The poll showed that 26.4 percent of gay students and 19.4 percent of gender nonconforming students felt unsafe on campus, down from 35.6 percent and 24.4 percent in 2020, they said.
The online survey was conducted between September 2023 and June last year, with 1,716 valid samples.
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