Has Taiwan Achieved Gender Equality in the Workplace? A Review on The Female Workforce
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This article is part of the 56th issue of LEAP — Voices of Youth e-letter. Subscribe now.
Taiwan Women’s Center is an exhibition space dedicated to showcasing the historical legacy, educational culture, and diverse exchange behind women’s rights development in Taiwan. Every year during International Women’s Day, the center updates people in Taiwan and abroad with the most recent and comprehensive developments in women’s rights. This year, Taiwan Women’s Center organized the themed exhibition “Unlock — Women’s Significance*Economic Transformation.” By revisiting women’s important roles throughout the various phases of Taiwan’s economic development, the exhibition inspires viewers to think about how society can come together to build a more friendly workplace and economy in the face of social changes and the current conditions for women.
Women have played a pivotal role in the prosperous development of Taiwan’s economy. Since Taiwan transitioned from an agricultural to an industrial society in the 1960s, more women have entered the workforce over the past six decades. Has gender equality finally been achieved in the modern workplace? What are the challenges that remain for women today?
According to Shi-Yi Yen, supervisor of the comprehensive planning division of the Foundation for Women’s Rights Promotion and Development, women have made important contributions to Taiwan’s economic development over the past thirty years. They have been a crucial workforce that kept the service industry running. However, during the late 1980s when Taiwan’s local service sector began to rise, many cases of workplace gender inequality happened due to a lack of legislation protecting women’s right to work.
Amongst these cases, the 1987 “Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall Incident” was the most well-known.
The Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall Incident Prompts Gender Equality Legislation
Established in commemoration of founding father Sun Yat-sen’s historical accomplishments, Taiwan’s Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall is a cultural center consisting of performance halls and exhibition spaces. Because the memorial hall often hosts foreign guests and visitors, many attendants are needed to serve as receptionists and conduct guided tours.
As Yen mentioned, back then Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall implemented “anti-pregnancy” and “anti-marriage” clauses as well as “age limit requirements” for female attendants. Female applicants were requested to sign an unfair employment contract that required them to quit when they got pregnant, married, or exceeded the age of 30.
That year, 57 female employees who received termination notices from the memorial hall decided to band together and fight for their rights. After they hired lawyers to send legal attest letters to Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, they received replies stating that “attendants must be ‘well-demeanored’ when attending to foreign guests and introducing precious cultural artifacts at the most prestigious cultural institution in Taiwan. Thus, “old” women above the age of 30 could not qualify for this requirement.” This response sparked a wave of discontent among women’s groups.
Yen pointed out, although martial law had not yet been lifted, women’s groups still decided to pick up placards and take to the streets petitioning and protesting to the Ministry of Education, the memorial hall’s supervising authority. This incident led attorney Mei-Nu Yu, chairperson of the Awakening Foundation, to convene scholars and experts to form a legislative drafting team. In 1989, these women’s groups drafted the first part of the Workplace Gender Equality Act.
Since then, the act has been amended and renamed numerous times. In 2023, regulations on workplace sexual harassment were also further amended to offer more protection to female employees.
The Undeniable Significance of the Female Workforce
While Taiwan’s workplace has demonstrated relatively greater gender equality than before, there is still a long way to go before “true equality” is achieved. As Yen explained, the United Nations set the theme for this year’s International Women’s Day to be “Invest in women: Accelerate progress’” to highlight the importance of the female workforce. Many local women’s groups also launched exhibitions and events following this theme, echoing the significance and undeniable contributions of women to the economy.
Looking at past statistics, Yen pointed out that Taiwan’s female workforce participation rate gradually increased from 40% to roughly 50%. This increase was mainly attributed to a higher level of education among young women, as reflected by higher workforce participation rates in specific age groups. Nevertheless, there is still room for improvement in terms of the overall female employment rate.
In Yen’s opinion, despite the growth of the female workforce since 2000, society still doesn’t expect or encourage women to work in engineering or math-related fields. As a result, the proportion of female engineers remains relatively low, and “such industries will be dominated by masculine ideas and hence reproduce gender stereotypes due to a lack of female perspectives.”
Ongoing Development for Workplace Gender Equality in Taiwan
Furthermore, there are still many things to do on Taiwan’s path towards workplace gender equality. For example, many women are still forced to leave their jobs for reasons, such as marriage and pregnancy. They often need to overcome many challenges when they want to resume employment after a few years.
As revealed by statistics from the Ministry of Labor, the 2019 turnover rate for married women was 20.9%, nearly 40% of which was attributed to childbirth. About 40% of the women never returned to the workforce. Although there has been a decline in women’s turnover rate and an increase in their reinstatement rate compared to 2003, marriage and child-rearing are still undeniable roadblocks in the career development of modern-day women.
To solve these potential issues and enable women to continue their careers, the government not only implemented public childcare policies to change the stereotype that women should be the caretakers, menstrual and parental leave were also incorporated into the Labor Standards Act. This served to promote awareness of gender equality to the general public. However, the implementation and promotion of these policies do not signify the full achievement of gender equity. Taiwan still has a long way to go.
Over the past thirty years, women have played crucial roles across all industries in Taiwan. As more women break the “glass ceiling” and become leaders of their industries, society has also been breaking free from its expectations of gender roles. However, Yen expressed that progress has been slower than expected and that everyone needs to come together to bring true gender equality to the workplace.
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Author : Evelyn Yang
Freelance journalist exploring gender and public issues.
