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Background:
During the past half century, the United Nations held four important
worldwide women’s conferences and one special meeting for the purpose of
ensuring basic rights of women worldwide, securing opportunities of women’s
participation in development, promoting world peace and achieving gender
equality. It can be easily identified from the agenda discussed during the past
gathering. The consensus reached many action plans proposed that the
ideological trend of women’s rights was human’s rights. The scope of women’s
issues is also expanding following the impact of development. The strategies of
the women’s rights movement are constantly being adjusted along with the
progress of gender equality.
The main purpose of the first worldwide women’s conference held in 1975
was to draw the continuous attention of the government and people of each
country to gender discrimination by opening a worldwide dialogue. The Mexican
Declaration that was passed in this meeting not only confirmed women’s
contribution to development and peace, it also reiterated the equal status
pursued by women, referring to the equality of human dignity and value and the
equality of rights, opportunities and responsibilities between men and women.
It was also decided that the period from 1876 to 1985 would be the “10 Years for
Women”, requiring each country to amend legislation during this period to
ensure equal rights and resources for the genders. In addition, in order to
complete the goal of 10 Years for Women, a “World Action Plan” was also passed
in the meeting to ensure that the focus of securing women’s equal rights and
resources was placed on the rights to education, employment, healthcare,
lodging, nutrition and family planning. There were two conceptual
breakthroughs in this meeting. One was to abandon the idea that women were
born weaker and to believe that women should be entitled to the same rights
and resources as men. The other was that women’s development in all aspects
could only be achieved through their own active participation.
At the end of 1979, the United Nations passed the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, or “CEDAW”. This
convention was binding to a significant extent. The signing countries have the
obligation to provide a national report once every 4 years to state the progress
of the execution of the convention and the difficulties they encounter. The
convention also allows women suffering from gender discrimination to make a
complaint to the International Convention Organization. Since then, a personal
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complaint procedure equivalent to that for other human rights became available
for women’s human rights. In order to establish a consensus for the convention
in the international women’s community, a second worldwide women’s
conference was held in 1980. During discussions in this meeting, participants
realized that women themselves actually do not have the ability to exercise the
rights granted by law. Thus the differences between “pure protection of women’s
rights” and “promotion for the exercise of women’s rights” were re-considered.
It was proposed that the main obstacles against the exercise of women’s rights
include: lack of male’s support and participation, insufficient motivation for
women’s participation in politics, women’s lack of decision-making power and
independent economic power, non-disclosure of women’s actual needs, lack of
packaged measures (such as childcare) to support women’s participation in all
kinds of activities, etc. For this reason, the “Action Platform for the Second Half
of Women’s 10 Years by the United Nations” was passed in the meeting,
emphasizing employment, healthcare and education as the focuses of women’s
development.
The third worldwide women’s conference held in 1985 came at a crucial time,
at the end of the “Women’s 10 Years”. Using CEDAW as a tool, the meeting
started by reviewing and assessing the results of the “Women’s 10 Years”.
According to a report by the United Nations, although the target for the previous
10 years was to improve women’s status, the results showed that only a minority
of women were beneficiaries. In particular, women in developing countries were
still seriously marginalized. Hence the Nairobi Forward-Looking Strategies (the
“NFLS”) were proposed in the meeting to plan a new direction for the blueprint
of the future women’s movement, change the problem-solving strategy from
personal condition-oriented to overall structural change-oriented and allow
women’s issues to become important issues of human development. In other
words, not only should attention be paid to issues related to women’s rights in
the traditional fields of family, employment, health, education and social services,
they should also be discussed in various fields such as industry, science,
communications and environment. The ground work for “gender statistics and
analysis” and “gender budget” should also start to be developed. Furthermore,
the United Nations also urged its affiliated organizations to set up different types
of women-related working teams in order for women’s issues to be truly
implemented in the action plans of individual organizations.
At the same time, the United Nations also had many interpretations of
“development”. From the perspective of the benchmarks developed by the
United Nations Development Program (UNDP) over the years to measure the
degree of development of countries, gross domestic product (GDP) 1 was the
only benchmark before 1990. Thereafter, the Human Development Index (HDI)2
was introduced, in which benchmarks related to life quality such as human life
expectancy and level of education were included. GDP was no longer the only
benchmark; the Gender Development Index (GDI)3, the Gender Empowerment
Measures (GEM)4 and the Gender Inequality Index (GII)5 showed the results of
development between different genders. After 2000, the people-oriented and
environmentally-concerned Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 6 were
introduced, serving as the development guidelines for all countries worldwide
for the following 15 years. Among these goals, six main goals were closely related
to women’s development or directly identified gender equality as key
1
GDP:Gross Domestic Product
2
HDI:Human Development Index
3
GDI:Gender Development Index
4
GEM:Gender Empowerment Measure
5
GII:Gender Inequality Index
6
MDGs:Millennium Development Goals
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development items.
In this post-2015 stage, according to the MDGs period has been completed
and 193 countries of UN have accepted the 2016-2030 Development Agenda in
September 2015 and proposed 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) 7 as
future governance reference, in which Goal 5 is to achieve gender equality,
enhance the rights of all women and girls8, and other goals must be integrated
into a gender perspective. When we look back the women’s movement and the
interpretation of the substance of development underscore two irreversible facts.
One is that the future of mankind will no longer be dominated by one single
gender. Instead a society based on common governance and decision-making
under equal gender participation will be the norm. The other is that the fruits of
economic development must be shared by all mankind. The goal of social
development is to maintain a sustainable environment for all kinds co-existence.
Overall, this is a process that evolves from the legislative protection of women’s
rights to the promotion of effective exercise of rights by women. Additionally, it
is a process that moves from focusing on women’s issues to focusing on gender
issues. It is also a process that shifts genders issues from the marginal to the
mainstream. It is even more a process of encouraging women’s participation as
well as pursuing a transfer of examples.
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SDGs:Sustainable Development Goals.
8
This is the official simplified Chinese translation of the United Nations, English original for SDG 5: Achieve
gender equality and empower all women and girls. Website:
http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/69/L.85&referer=http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopm
ent/&Lang=C
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with participative governance and begun to have an influence on policies. The
results from legislative amendment and establishment of new laws also continue
to accumulate. After the Committee of Women’s Rights Promotion, Executive
Yuan (It is now the “Gender Equality Committee of the Executive Yuan,
hereinafter referred to as the “former Executive Yuan Women’s Committee”) was
established in 1997, private women’s organizations gradually began to use the
former Executive Yuan Women’s Committee as a platform of participative
democracy and started to try to manage this new partnership relationship. In
2003, through the “International Women’s Symposium – Gender Mainstreaming
Perspective in Taiwan”, this democracy platform further showed its function. Not
only have new international issues been included into the relevant domestic
agenda, various gender mainstreaming actions by the United States have also
been actively implemented in the government system. The promotion of gender
mainstreaming by government departments not only accelerated the progress of
women’s right in Taiwan, it also expanded the scope of women’s issues and
increased the influence of the women’s movement on the government system
and Taiwanese society. This has earned us good scores and rankings under the
various international assessments mentioned above. The process of these efforts
and the substantial results can be explained in terms of the following three
aspects:
General Policies
The drafting of this platform was achieved by participation from both private
organizations and the government following numerous dialogues. Its form is
different from the summary statement model of general platforms. Its structure
is designed to look back on the evolution of women’s rights and gender equality
and then review the existing status and environment in our country. Considering
continuity of policy implementation, the six main fields under the 2004 Women’s
Policy Guideline were expanded and combined. In response to urgent domestic
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and overseas issues, two chapters were added: “Gender on Demography,
Marriage and Family” and “Gender on Environment, Energy and ICT ” to achieve
completeness and a forward-looking perspective. Its basic spirit is to insist on
three main ideas: “Gender equality is the core value to protect social fairness and
justice”, “Improvement of women’s rights is the priority task to promote gender
equality” and “Gender mainstreaming is an effective route to achieve human-
oriented policy”. The entirety of this Guideline was connected by these three
main ideas. Each individual chapter also demonstrates the key points to be
controlled and the ideals that are pursued in each field. They are detailed as
follows.
Chapter 5 “Gender on Physical Security and Justice” covers issues that women
have always been concerned with. Therefore, in addition to proposing more
concrete actions for the realization of existing personal security mechanisms and
laws, this chapter also recognizes that the protection of women’s personal
security will fail if there is no consensus under the judicial system. Therefore,
through the passing of the domestic CEDAW Enforcement Act, the expectations
of the judicial system by women have also been included in the platform.
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Action Plans for Each Chapter
I. Gender on Equal Rights, Decision Making, and Influence
(I) Reinforce gender equality policies and mechanisms within the five Yuans,
actively develop gender equality policies, implement gender awareness
training, promote equal gender rights, and develop and announce
administrative guidelines, green papers, or white papers which address
issues pertaining to gender equality.
(II) The aim of this policy is to continuously promote compliance with the one-
third gender principle as it relates to staffing requirements, including for
committee members under each department of the Executive Yuan,
directors and supervisors of government-funded foundations and state-
owned enterprises, cabinet members, members of the Examination Yuan,
members of the Control Yuan, Grand Justices, and appointment and
promotion of selection rank civil servants. Furthermore, the government
shall actively utilize relevant policies and resources to formulate
mechanisms for performance reviews, reward measures, and financial
assistance in order to advance the adoption and implementation of the rule
among Farmers Associations, Fishermen Associations, Irrigation
Associations, Labor unions, Civil Associations, and private enterprises.
(III) Amend the Local Government Act to change the principle of reserved seats
for women to the principle of gender percentage which aims to increase
the percentage of seats held by women to 30% over the medium-term and
40% over the long-term, as targeted in the Beijing Platform for Action.
(IV) Encourage women to participate in labor union affairs and increase the
number of opportunities for women to serve as labor relations
representatives.
(V) Strengthen the implementation of gender awareness training and capacity
building for members and leaders of Farmers Associations, Fishermen
Associations, Irrigation Associations, Labor Unions, Civil Associations, and
management-level personnel of private enterprises, and increase
opportunities for female participation and engagement at the decision-
making level.
(VI) Help establish female business leader groups beyond the scope of the six
major industrial and commercial groups which encompass large, medium,
and small enterprises, and consult with female business representatives to
ensure their voices are incorporated into economic policies formulated by
the government.
(VII) Increase the international visibility of Taiwan's progress achieved in the area
of gender equality by actively working together with private institutions and
government agencies, staying abreast of and actively participating in
regional and international gender issues, and establishing ongoing
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exchanges with other countries which facilitate mutual learning.
(VIII) Reinforce the promotion of issues and initiatives of domestic organizations
including their ability to maintain ties to the international community, help
grassroots of women's groups coordinate their experience in promoting
issues and initiatives and further their understanding of the latest trends
and developments in international gender issues in other regions, and
increase the visibility of Taiwan's progress achieved in the area of gender
equality by forging bonds and participating in the international community.
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VI. Gender on Health and Healthcare
(I) Formulate women's health policies and action plans with a gender-based
perspective, and establish assessment benchmarks which allow the effects
of the plans to be reviewed on a periodic basis. Such content shall
encompass issues such as reproductive and menstrual health, young
women's health, active aging, mental health, caregiver support, cancer
prevention, prevention of chronic illnesses, prevention against tobacco
hazards, food and drug safety, environmental safety and health, promotion
of health and labor protection in the workplace, and promotion of women's
health issues among new immigrants and indigenous populations.
(II) Health, medical care, and universal publicly available long-term care
policies and action plans shall focus on local communities and tribes and
adequately meet the needs of persons of different genders and groups
living in urban, rural, and tribal areas.
(III) Implement local and active aging policies and provide three-tier long-term
care services consisting of local community care, support services, and
caregiving service systems based on the needs of care recipients, and
establish integrated community service models and assess their effects.
Long-term care policies shall reflect additional participation of different
groups of people and private organizations in democratic review and
monitoring mechanisms.
(IV) Periodically review coping strategies for the gender ratio imbalance of
newborns and analyze the effects of such strategies.
(V) Examine the labor resource policies of nursing practitioners, investigate
labor shortages in nursing personnel and instances of low wages and
excessive working hours, and improve their working environments and
labor conditions.
(VI) Promote reasonable wage and burden of caregiving for people working in
caregiving services. Establish relevant support networks, improve the
working environment and labor conditions of caregivers, expand local
employment opportunities, and increase respect for individuals who work
in the caregiving system.
(VII) Bolster training programs and expand the number of personnel able to
provide caregiving services, design a diverse range of integrated training
courses ranging from preventive care to primary care, progressively
reinforce training channels to augment professional competencies and
retooling, and ensure unimpeded post-training employment matching, and
promote industry-academic cooperation to meet the demand for workers
qualified to provide caregiving services.
(VIII) Respond to various issues including the relatively older average age of
obstetric and gynecological (OB/GYN) physicians, lack of manpower in
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terms of newly-trained OB/GYN physicians, and the unequal availability of
such medical practitioners in urban and rural areas. Research and formulate
relevant improvement strategies and continue to monitor the number of
OB/GYN specialists undergoing training, the supply and demand of labor,
and locations of where such specialists provide services so as to ensure that
rural areas, regions inhabited by indigenous persons, and women with
disabilities are able to obtain adequate reproductive health and medical
treatment services in terms of both quality and quantity.
(IX) Men have a lower average life expectancy compared to women; hence, a
comparative study should be conducted on the average life expectancies
and lifestyles of males and females, and research on different groups of
males should be conducted to examine health risks, healthy lifestyle
management, and social participation strategies to bolster the physical and
mental health of men and their health self-management as well as reduce
the greater susceptibility to illnesses and occupational hazards among
males resulting from gender stereotypes. The efficacy of such programs
shall also be assessed.
(X) Establish comprehensive family and community support networks which
provide services such as training, consultations, support services, and
respite care, including in-home support services, community kitchens for
seniors, and elderly day care centers to reduce burdens on caregivers.
Assess the availability of caregivers and respite requirements of family
caregivers and families which employ home care workers in a way that takes
into account the right of workers to a 6-day workweek, and draft annual
plans and provide relevant services.
(XI) Establish a local care network which provides care to pregnant women
spanning prenatal to postnatal care, increase reproductive health, self-
health care, physical and mental health knowledge and independence, and
foster a socially supportive and friendly environment conducive to child-
rearing and breastfeeding which allows for participation by both males and
females.
(XII) In light of women's longer life expectancy, higher frequency of disability in
old age, and the increasing trend of living alone in old age, a diverse set of
holistic programs is to be devised which aims to enhance the physical and
mental wellbeing of women in old age. Help senior citizens lead more
independent lifestyles, prevent and slow the rate of loss of mental and
physical faculties, reduce the amount of time elderly individuals have to rely
on long-term care, and increase the average healthy life expectancy in order
to enhance the quality of life during old age.
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