Women’s rights advocates yesterday urged the government to increase the statutory minimum for annual leave and decouple it from seniority, saying that Taiwan’s culture of long working hours exacerbates rigid gender roles and forces women to sacrifice their careers for unpaid caregiving.
Single Taiwanese women on average spend 3.03 hours of uncompensated labor a day on domestic chores, while women living with a spouse or partner spend 4.41 hours a day, Awakening Foundation representatives told a news conference in Taipei, citing the group’s survey.
These figures are 2.6 times longer than the average time spent by Taiwanese men in comparable relationships, they said.
Photo: CNA
Female employees on average work 165.7 hours a month, while men work 170.5 hours, suggesting that women are forced to work less or take on part-time jobs to make time for their families, they said.
Fundamentally, the long working hours allowed by Taiwanese labor laws play a large role in gender discrimination in workplaces and at home, foundation chairperson Kuo Yi-ching (郭怡青) said.
The government should amend the law to allow workers to better manage their time between work and family, and make for a more equitable distribution of domestic chores, she said.
Photo courtesy of Heping Island Geopark
Taiwan Labor Front secretary-general Yang Shu-wei (楊書瑋) said that a discriminatory wage structure and uneven expectations on women to take on domestic roles systematically shut women out of the workplace and promotions.
At the same time, men are expected to make enough money to be the sole breadwinner, resulting in stratified gender roles, he said.
The overreliance on seniority for accruing annual leave means that a worker has to stay with the same employer for 25 years to obtain the legal limit of 30 days a year, Kuo said.
The assumption of stable, life-long employment is out of touch with reality, he said, adding that South Korean, German, French and British workers could expect more than 15 leave days after just a year of full employment.
Taiwanese Association of Family Caregivers public affairs official Chang Hsiao-chan (張筱嬋) said that among Taiwanese workers who also spend more than 20 hours on caregiving at home, 44 percent are supervisors at work, and 37 percent have 10 years’ seniority.
This poses significant obstacles to women who want to temporarily leave work to have children, she said.
Birth Reform Alliance managing director Hsu Shu-hui (徐書慧) said the short-term natal leave granted by Taiwanese companies is inadequate for rearing children, which is a continuous long-term task that could take years.
Taiwanese women’s burden of time poverty is among one of the most significant causes of the nation’s plummeting birthrate, she added.
The Ministry of Finance this afternoon announced the winning numbers for the March-April uniform invoice lottery. The winning number for the NT$10 million (US$318,060) special prize is 19531471, and the winning number for the NT$2 million grand prize is 85941329. Three numbers were drawn for the NT$200,000 first prize: 07225810, 20231230 and 83518781. Those with receipts matching the last seven digits of any of the first-prize numbers will win the NT$40,000 second prize, while those matching the last six digits will win the NT$10,000 third prize. Those whose receipts match the last five digits of the first-prize numbers can claim the NT$4,000 fourth prize,
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