Photo: A flag catcher resting after a dragon boat race. By Olimpia Kot
What is happening?
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Huang Jie (黃捷) was named to the BBC 100 Women list last week, becoming the first female politician from Taiwan to receive this prestigious recognition. In recent years, other Taiwanese women, such as Dharma Master Cheng Yen (證嚴法師), a Buddhist philanthropist and founder of the Tzu Chi humanitarian organization, who was included in the 2022 list, and Lin Nien-Tzu, a social entrepreneur and founder of the Dharti Mata Sustainable Workshop in Nepal, have also featured. Such recognition highlights the growing international awareness of contributions and achievements by Taiwanese women.
What is the broader picture?
As a vocal advocate for reforms in gender and women’s rights, Huang has championed issues such as access to fertility treatments for single women and lesbian couples, combating digital sexual violence, as well as period poverty. Notably, she is Taiwan’s first openly LGBTQ+ legislator and the youngest member of the country’s legislature. Her achievements have built upon decades of feminist activism in Taiwan, which has sought to challenge and transform the deeply patriarchal structure of Taiwanese society.
In traditional Han society, Confucian ideals of harmony often required women to sacrifice their dignity or well-being to maintain hierarchical relationships. In contrast, Taiwan’s Austronesian Indigenous peoples traditionally featured gender divisions of labor based on role specialization rather than dominance. Yet these societies have experienced significant shifts due to the influence of modern colonial states. As a result, intricate and diverse gender divisions have gradually been supplanted by patriarchal norms, leading to an increasing imbalance in the roles of Indigenous women.
Taiwan’s modern women’s movement began in the 1970s, evolving in tandem with the democratization movement and reflecting broader social changes. In the early 1990s, Taiwan’s feminist movement centered on two key advocacy groups: the Awakening Foundation (婦女新知基金會) and the Homemakers United Foundation (HUF, 主婦聯盟環境保護基金會). The former adopted a top-down approach, advocating individualist feminism focused on autonomy and legal equality, while HUF took a bottom-up approach, mobilizing housewives and mothers to promote relational feminism, which embraced traditional feminine roles alongside social equality. Gradually, as more women joined the legislature, they advanced legislation to protect and promote women’s rights, including the 1998 Domestic Violence Prevention Act (家庭暴力防治法) the 2002 Gender Equality in Employment Act (性別工作平等法), the 2004 Gender Equity Education Act (性別平等教育法), the 2005 Sexual Assault Crime Prevention Act (性侵害防治法), and the 2005 Sexual Harassment Prevention Act (性騷擾防治法). In 2007, thanks to women’s groups advocacy, the Legislative Yuan passed the Proposal for Membership to join CEDAW (the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.) Although Taiwan could not formally engage with the United Nations, Taipei took significant steps by preparing its first national report in 2009 and enacting the Implementation Act in 2011, thereby integrating CEDAW into domestic law. Such developments can be seen as paving the way for former President Tsai Ing-wen’s 2023 proposal to strengthen existing equality laws following a series of high-profile sexual harassment cases involving politicians from both the ruling DPP and opposition parties.
Indeed, the election of Tsai as President in 2016, reaffirmed by her re-election in 2020, symbolizes the advancing wave of women’s political empowerment in Taiwan. This momentum was further evidenced in the 2022 local elections, with female local government heads reaching a historic high of 56.3% and a nearly 10 percent increase in women holding Cabinet positions.
Why does it matter?
As the first country to legalize same-sex marriage, Taiwan also ranks number one in Asia on gender equality, according to statistics from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. However, the country retains traditional divorce and inheritance laws favorable towards men, regressive attitudes toward sexual activity and women’s healthcare, and did not decriminalize extramarital affairs for both sexes until 2021 (nearly 70 percent of the population still supports the criminalization of adultery). Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health and Welfare is still considering amendments to allow married women to obtain abortions without spousal consent and, last month, Taiwan’s Ministry of Justice withdrew its proposal to increase financial penalties for illegal abortions, following opposition from women’s groups. These examples highlight the ongoing tension between legal progress and deeply ingrained traditional values, underscoring the need for continued advocacy to achieve genuine gender equality.
