Taiwan Today

The women they are a-changing. But both sexes cannot seem to let go of old attitudes and the restraints of tradition on equality.

Every Tuesday night at 9:30, one million of Taiwan's four million households watch "Women Women," currently one of the most popular talk shows on television. People like the show because it offers an arena for dialogue on topics that are very sexual and personal in nature, and rarely discussed openly. The program includes subjects such as extramarital affairs, premarital sex, divorce, childbirth out of wedlock, sexual fantasies and expectations, and sexual harassment and discrimination in the work place.

To a great extent, the subjects brought up in "Women Women" and the lively, spontaneous, and often heated discussions that the show sets off among its home viewers reflect a dynamic trend happening in Taiwan society today. That is, the relationship between Chinese men and women are changing, maybe not much by Western standards but enough to unsettle a culture often viewed by outsiders as conservative, reserved, and suppressed.

The traditional assignment of roles, with men working as breadwinners, and women serving as housekeepers and child rearers, is strongly entrenched. But new definitions of the woman's role are being formed as Chinese women receive higher education, join the work force, compete with men, earn more than pin money, and become financially independent. Chinese women are also slowly resisting the old thinking that women are inferior to men, and that in male-female relationships, a woman should be passive, submissive, and always a joy to have around. At the same time, a small fraction of the women have responded enthusiastically to the women's liberation movement that took off in the United States during the sixties, and have wholeheartedly embraced the goals of equal rights and equal opportunity.

Chinese men realize that their wives, daughters, and co-workers are changing, and are trying to get used to the "new woman" without jeopardizing their egos. More and more husbands, traditionally considered rulers of the home, are helping their employed wives with household chores. Occupational segregation and stereotypes based on gender differences are gradually disappearing in many fields, and career women are receiving more visibility today than ever before. For example, there are more women news anchors than men on television.

Even female-dominated fields are more accepting of men. For example, the number of males in nursing school is growing. But society remains slow in breaking away from the old stereotype of female nurses. It is difficult for male nurses to find employment in local hospitals. According to Chang Chueh (張珏), a public health professor and coordinator of the Women's Research Program at National Taiwan University, hospital administrators prefer their nurses to be female. "This is an example of occupational sexual segregation," she says.

Indeed, roles and functions assigned by tradition are difficult to break. For example, since the days of the Tang dynasty (618-907 A.D), only Chinese men were allowed to participate in the annual rituals celebrating the birthday of Confucius. In Taiwan, the director of the Civil Affairs Department of the Taipei City Government officiates at the ceremony. All have been men until 1985, when Wang Yueh-ching became the first woman director of the department. That year, she also became the first woman to officiate at the rigid and tradition-bound rituals for Confucius's birthday.

Last year, because Wang had already set a precedent, another tradition came to an end. Women musicians, wearing the costumes that for centuries were designated only for men, took part in performing the ancient ceremonial music for the event. According to a Civil Affairs Department official, there were not enough male musicians available.

Attitudes seem to be changing. In early 1990, Ming Sheng Pao (民生報), one of the largest circulating newspapers in Taiwan, did a survey on modern Chinese men's expectations of women. The survey showed that almost two-thirds of the 300 men interviewed would not mind women taking the initiative in courtship. This was a surprising result since until only a few years ago, young women were told that taking the role of initiator was degrading and was something that decent women did not do.

Perhaps the 300 men who answered the survey were representative of the more progressive sector of society, because the age-old concept that "men are superior, women are inferior" still dominates the patterns of interaction between men and women. "This is very unbecoming to the image of a modern society that seems to be open-minded," says Hsu Shen-shu (徐慎恕), founder of the Homemakers' Union and Foundation. The foundation is a civic organization dedicated to helping Chinese housewives develop themselves by getting involved in public welfare activities.

For one thing, Hsu points out, society still considers males to be better than females. Women who have just given birth are always asked if the baby is a boy or a girl. "If it is a boy, congratulations are quick and hearty," she says. "But if it is a girl, comforting words are in order."

Under the constitution, all men and women have equal opportunity to education. The law might guarantee it, but reality does not reflect it. According to Ministry of Education statistics, out of the 1.4 million people classified as illiterate, about 70 percent are women over fifteen years of age. The rest are men over the age of sixty. Few women continue on to graduate school, paying heed to parental and social pressure to marry in their early twenties. A popular admonition goes: "If you study some more, you will become an 'old virgin.' No man wants to marry a woman who is smarter than he is." In 1990, there was one woman to four men enrolled in master's programs, and only 599 of the 3,799 students pursuing their doctorates were women.

Although the numbers are more balanced in the work place, women believe that they are not treated equal to men in terms of salary, welfare and retirement benefits, and career opportunities. An Interior Ministry survey shows that half of Taiwan's employed women (total population: 10 million) think they make only one-half or two-thirds of the salaries of men holding the same jobs. It seems, too, that career opportunities suffer because of family responsibilities. In 1989, close to a million women left their jobs to get married. Another 368,000 left because of pregnancy.

The same survey also shows that 70 percent of the women work under the leadership of men. Although more women are making it past the clerical level into the "lace class" – as the group of women who have made it to the managerial level are called – men still dominate the senior positions in factories and offices. Women managers find it very difficult to break into the inner circle of men decision-makers.

Grace Yuan (袁承華), has worked her way up from secretary to manager, acquiring additional skills and promotions in several Taipei companies. "I never saw any woman included in the board of directors," she says. After ten years of working as an employee, Yuan established her own consulting company. "I realized that I was not competing with people who were as capable as I was, but against people called men," she says. Yuan points out that although abilities do count, personnel offices gave men the upper hand in training opportunities and promotions.

There are many women like Yuan who, frustrated by the few advancement opportunities given them as female employees, leave their jobs and start their own businesses. According to figures provided by the ROC National Youth Commission, the proportion of business start-up loans it has granted to women has remained at 17 percent from 1986 to 1990. Statistics offered by the Executive Yuan indicate that the number of small and medium-sized businesses owned by women in 1988 exceeded 30,000. The figure does not include unregistered businesses.

In the past, divorce or the death of a husband led women to start up their own businesses. Today, more women become entrepreneurs because they want to. Why would a woman leave the safety and security of her housework and risk marital disharmony, to start her own business? Why would she reject the stability of an employee paycheck to shoulder the burden of decision-making and the threat of bankruptcy? Yuan has a few answers. Her consulting company, Interplan, provides organizational assistance and training courses for people who want to start their own businesses. Women make up the majority of the company's clients.

"Many of the women are now aware that they, too, have the potential to become successful in business," Yuan says. "Tied in with that is the desire to be more financially independent. A large number of women also want to contribute to the family income, and having their own businesses will allow them more flexibility. These women are usually very devoted to their husbands and children."

Yuan also points out that most businesses founded by women do not develop further than the embryonic stage. She says: "Women usually choose businesses that are traditionally associated with women, such as the so-called romantic businesses – teahouses, coffee shops, and flower shops. But more women have branched out into advertising, design, public relations, and mass media, and are doing quite well."

Up until five years ago, the majority of women entrepreneurs were in their early thirties to mid-forties. "But they are getting younger these days," Yuan says. "We have young women in their mid-twenties as clients. You would be surprised by the enthusiasm and seriousness they have for their business ideas. But they can be too naive sometimes."

But business enthusiasm is often dampened by the emotional wear-and-tear suffered by a woman who has to balance her family's needs with her business responsibilities. Many Chinese men would prefer their wives to stay at home to perform her wifely and motherly duties. But the high cost of living in Taiwan has made the wife's income indispensable. Married women whose husbands' incomes are substantial enough to support the family often feet guilty about having their own careers or businesses. The husbands' egos also suffer. Yuan cites the example of a client who had been very capable in running her own business. The husband asked her to choose between her business or their marriage. "She chose to keep her marriage, of course," Yuan says.

Sexual discrimination is also a fact in government. Some civil service examinations are restricted to men, such as the examinations for protocol officers and diplomats. Other examinations set a quota for women in great disproportion to the number of men qualified for the exam. Currently, less than one-third of the 540,000 civil servants are women. According to statistics from the Central Personnel Administration, women civil servants on the average have higher educational attainment. Thirty-four percent of the women have bachelor's degrees, and men 28 percent. However, only 1 percent of the women have graduate degrees. This compares unfavorably with the 28 percent of men who have master's or doctorate degrees. Top-level positions remain a thing of the future, since less than half a percent of the women civil servants make it as heads of government organizations.

The big breakthrough came when Shirley Kuo was appointed minister of finance in 1988, and became the first woman to serve in the cabinet. Known as the "steel lady" or Taiwan's Margaret Thatcher, Kuo, sixty and married, has an impressive academic background. She holds a Ph.D. in economics from Kobe University in Japan, and had a distinguished career in academia in Taiwan and the U.S. before joining the government in 1973 as vice chairman of the Economic Planning Council, Executive Yuan.

She is presently chairman of the Council for Economic Planning and Development. Whether Kuo's shining star will be followed by other women in government remains to be seen.

The field of politics belongs to men. In the Legislative Yuan, there are only thirty-six women out of the 242 legislators. Very few women run for office, and political participation among women remains at a minimum. Feminists tend to attribute the low number of women serving in politics or running for office to sexual discrimination by the general public. Novelist Chu Hsiu-chuan (朱秀娟) thinks otherwise'. "Chinese women generally express little interest in politics," she says. "So how can you blame society or government for boycotting women?" Chu is the author of the bestseller, Lareer Woman, which is about a Chinese woman who has it all: a successful career and happy marriage.

Indeed, women in the old days paid little attention to matters outside of her family. But this is changing, too. A survey done by the Executive Yuan in 1982 showed that only 20 percent of the island's women were involved in community welfare activities. But 1988 statistics from the Taiwan Provincial Government show that close to 55 percent of the public service volunteers recruited by the government were women.

Women have also taken things into their own hands, and are playing a more aggressive role than men in public service.

Many of the active civic organizations are composed of women only, and their activities reflect their concerns for women as well as for society. For example, the Awakening Foundation began a program called "Gender Equality Education," which is aimed at ridding the education system of old biases toward sex differences. The Homemakers' Union and Foundation, which now has ten men in its membership, has been active in propagating environmental awareness. And the Modern Women's Foundation has begun a battle against Taiwan's prolific sex industry.

"In the past, the function of women's organizations was limited to helping women become assets to their husbands," says Hsu of the Homemakers' Union and Foundation. "Women today are different. Their concerns have gone beyond the scope of their families to civic affairs and social issues."

According to Chang Chueh, women often come in handy when problems need solutions. She says: "Take, for example, the birth control campaign. Many years ago, when the government was promoting family planning, women were told that practicing birth control was their responsibility. The whole campaign was not undertaken to relieve women of the pain of childbirth, but to solve the country's over-population problem."

Once again, women are being called to help solve the labor shortage crisis.

"Importing cheap labor could cause many social problems," Chang says, "so the government would rather keep foreign laborers at bay. Women, especially housewives who have never worked before or stopped working a long time ago, are now being encouraged to join the work force. Housewives have never been welcome in the industrial sector before. "

Nowhere is the outmoded thinking that women are inferior to men more apparent than in Taiwan's Civil Law. Recently, the government announced that the foreign wives of male citizens will be granted immediate citizenship. But the new regulation requires that the foreign husbands of female citizens will have to wait three years before they can be granted citizenship.

In addition, Chang notes, the Family Law has made it mandatory for the wife to pay her husband's financial debts, but not vice versa. In fact, many wives have had to serve their husbands' jail terms after the husbands escaped overseas. The Family Law also specifies that the husband is the legal custodian of his wife's properties, whether they had been acquired before or after marriage. "Divorce becomes extremely risky for the wife," says Chang, "because it would deprive her of money and property."

Things get even worse after divorce, especially if the woman cannot support herself financially. The Divorce Law does not require the man to pay alimony, even if he was the cause of the divorce or the initiator of the divorce proceedings. "This explains why many housewives who have never worked before choose to stay in unhappy marriages after consulting with legal experts," Chang says.

Divorced women also risk losing their children if the divorce was not amiable, as is usually the case in Taiwan. The Divorce Law states that custody belongs to the children's natural father, based on the traditional rule that children must carry the father's family name. A woman cannot demand visitation rights.

Fortunately, these unfair laws were rectified in 1985. But the new laws only protected the rights and welfare of women who married after 1985. They can keep property under their own names, and claim them upon divorce. Joint property can be split equally between husband and wife. Also, the wife no longer bears any responsibility for her husband's financial debts. She may also have custody of the children after divorce – but only if her husband permits it. Interestingly, after the new laws were activated, several stories cropped up in the press about unhappily married men who could not afford to seek divorce because their wives owned most of the property.

Ten years ago, divorce was a rare occurrence, and the ramifications of the Divorce Law on child custody, financial responsibility, and the division of property did not receive as much attention as it does now. A report published by the Taipei City Government's Department of Social Affairs shows that the divorce rate in Taipei rose to 3 percent in 1990, almost double the 1976 figure of 1.8 percent.

Chai Sung-lin (柴松林), a demographics professor at National Central University, states in a report on divorce figures that in 1990, one out of every five couples in Taiwan and one out of every four couples in Taipei got divorced. The number is expected to increase to one in every three couples before 1999, eventually catching up with the divorce rate in many Western countries.

Incompatibility is often cited as the major cause of divorce. Now that women are more educated and many of them are able to support themselves financially, they do not see marriage as a lifetime meal ticket, and take the saying, "Whatever you marry, you follow," as hogwash. They are less willing to swallow their pride and tears the way their mothers and grandmothers used to.

A study on divorce done by Warm Life, a women's organization dedicated to helping divorced women cope with their new lives, shows that 95 percent of the divorces in Taiwan were caused by the "other woman." In Taiwan, a married woman having an affair is rare news, either because few women have extramarital affairs, or because men lose face if they admit their wives have been sleeping with other men. Huang Kuang-kuo (黃光國), a psychology professor of National Taiwan University, admits that male infidelity is a serious problem but thinks that attributing it to 95 percent of the divorces is an exaggeration.

Chu Hsiu-chuan says it is very easy for married men to become intimate with women other than their wives. "Most Chinese marriages are not built on a solid foundation of love, understanding, and trust," she says. "So when temptations appear in the work place, men find it hard to resist." Chu is in her forties, married, and has built twenty-four of her novels around modern Chinese love.

Huang disagrees. "Most people today marry out of free love," he says. "Arranged marriages are hardly seen or heard of these days." Huang notes that temptations are difficult for men to resist because they abound – and not only in the work place. "Where else can you see such a high density of sex parlors?" he says. "Just walk down any street in downtown Taipei, it is amazing to see so many places such as barbershops, coffee shops, piano bars, motels, KTV (karaoke television), and MTV (movie television) selling every variety of sexual service. In certain areas of the city, whole blocks are filled with sex establishments. Taipei is not the worst. If you go down to cities in the south such as Taoyuan, Taichung, and Kaohsiung, you would be flabbergasted !"

Family violence is another major cause of divorce. Huang points out that battered wives have long been a problem in Taiwan, especially in families where the husband is the sole decision maker. But it was only two years ago that society became more aware of the extent and seriousness of the problem when centers for battered wives were opened. Since then, over 600 cases have been filed by the centers, showing that family violence is indeed a fact of family life in Taiwan.

"Most people don't see the problem because today a lot of families live in the isolation of apartments," Huang says. "And what happens in each apartment is hardly noticed. In the old days, extended families lived together in houses, and a man couldn't beat up his wife and keep it a secret."

Divorce is also claiming younger couples. According to Chai's report, the average age of divorced men used to be thirty-three, the age recognized in Taiwan as the beginning of mid-life crisis. Today, most couples who divorce are still in their mid-twenties. Women are generally the ones who file for divorce.

Society shows little sympathy for divorced women. "It is a disgrace for a woman to get divorced," says Shih Chi-ching (施寄青), founder of Warm Life. "She is invariably viewed by people around her as a failed wife. Therefore, divorced women in Taiwan face more emotional problems than divorced men."

In 1982, Shih walked out of a thirteen-year marriage and her two sons. She now lives with an adopted son.

Shih points out that the divorce rate is much higher than the remarriage rate. "Most Chinese women avoid new relationships with men because they are afraid of failure," she says. "Divorced men tend to remarry."

Lee Yuan-chen (李元貞), founder of Awakening Foundation, explains that most men remarry out of necessity because they are used to having women around to feed them, clothe them, and keep the house in order. "So when they get divorced, they panic and take on the look of helpless children without mothers," she says. 

It is, however, far easier for divorced men to find someone to marry. Money and power, according to Huang, is the advantage they have over divorced women. He says: "In a materialistic society like Taiwan, where making ends meet is tough and financial security is an overriding concern, money tends to define the relationship between men and women. Unfortunately, women are the financial weaklings because the men keep the money. And money makes a man powerful."

One of the results of Taiwan's high divorce rate is the increase in the number of single men and, more significant, in the number of single women who have decided that marriage is too risky. Grace Yuan is over thirty, and is several years past a Chinese woman's prime years for marriage – twenty-three to twenty-seven. She has no plans to marry as yet. "Many of the women I know from my university days are divorced now," she says. "That is really scary. My father sometimes says to me, 'Maybe you're better off unmarried.'"

A lot of the "single nobles," the trendy name given to the unmarried young, do not even see the need to marry. Yuan has many friends over thirty who do not think that marriage is worth the trouble. She says: "They enjoy their freedom so much that they simply cannot think of any reason to bring in another person into their lives. Why bother making life complicated?"

But not all single nobles purposefully remain single. Many are forced to postpone marriage until they can afford raising a family and buying a home. In 1988, men married at the average age of twenty-six, and women twenty-three. But into the 1990s, the high cost of living has delayed marriage for both men and women until they are in their late twenties or early thirties.

"There really should be nothing wrong with staying single," says Huang. Yet he points out that people in Taiwan still live within a tradition that dictates that a man must marry to carryon the family name, and a woman without a husband has no home. "Many people still believe that a woman does not belong in her parents' home, but in her husband's home. But if she is still unmarried when she dies, she will become a lost soul in the underworld."

Yet the point is that there are many single men and women out there and:as Huang says, "They all have physical needs. So the problem with sexual permissiveness begins." It is already accepted in Taiwan society that many of the young people have premarital sex. Figures are unavailable, however, because it remains a subject that is not openly or frankly discussed. But what was once forbidden behavior and belonged only in Hollywood movies is now, like divorce, a widespread fact of life. Often, people who live together do not try to hide it; and sometimes, their families, associates, and friends accept it.

Huang attempts to analyze what he sees as sexual permissiveness. He says: "This is a very materialistic society. The fanatical pursuit of material comfort creates a group of lonely and restless people. There is a spiritual vacuum, which in the West, can be filled by religion. But here, people resort to sensual pleasure to compensate for an empty life. They violate the social dictate that there should be no physical contact between a man and a woman, except for husband and wife."

This vacuum and emptiness is expressed by a twenty-nine-year-old woman who has never been married and runs her own business. She talks very openly about having a sexual relationship without a commitment to marriage. "I wouldn't mind having a playmate," she says. "And I am not the only one who thinks this way. There are many women like me who just want to enjoy sex without getting caught up in an emotional trap."

Not only adults, but an increasing number of adolescents are also found trespassing on forbidden grounds. Easy access to pornography and the intimate privacy of KTVs and MTVs, where a couple can sing along or watch a movie in tiny, dark rooms furnished with sofas, aggravates the problem.

In December 1990, the Taipei Sexual Disease Prevention Center did a survey of its patients and found that one-third had their first sexual intercourse between the ages of fifteen and nineteen, and almost half between the ages of twenty and twenty-four. Most significant, almost one-third had their first sexual experience with prostitutes, and the rest with friends, classmates, and co-workers.

Around the same time, the public health department of National Taiwan University did their own survey on the sexual attitudes of 5,000 high school and vocational school students. A large number of the 1,787 boys included in the survey did not strongly disapprove of premarital sex. Sixty-five percent said they "may accept" girls who have had sex. Forty percent had no opinion, while 10 percent said they "will accept."

The girls were more conservative. Twenty-five percent of the 3,213 girls covered by the survey had no opinion, and only ten percent said they "may accept" boys who have had sexual intercourse. Twenty-six girls admitted to having gotten pregnant, and there were a total of thirty-one abortions.

Elaine Sha(沙依仁), a sociology professor at National Taiwan University, blames foreign, specifically Western, influence and the mass media for the breakdown of the old morality and the new sexual permissiveness that has taken its place. Huang disagrees, pointing out that Chinese society has for a long time condoned carnal pleasure outside of marriage as a man's social activity. "We can't blame it all on Western influence," he says.

Women like Hsu Shen-shu of the Homemakers' Union and Foundation, on the other hand, would rather believe that it is acceptable for people to have sex if they want to, as long as they can protect themselves. Unfortunately, she notes, a large number of adults and adolescents alike are ignorant and careless as far as sex and protection are concerned. "Sex education is a great failure in Taiwan," she says.

As such, teenage pregnancy and abortion have become a common occurrence. (There are no figures available for abortions in Taiwan because they are illegal. Only married women may have abortions – but only if their husbands sign the consent form.) The number of unwed mothers and illegitimate children have also increased. Sha says: "Ten or fifteen years ago, there were only three places throughout Taiwan for unwed mothers to give birth. Today there are at least 100 such institutes." But according to the Taipei Women's Center, there are only seven independently registered organizations for unwed mothers, the rest are under civic or religious organizations.

Many people would like to think that the current confusion in man-woman relationships is inevitable in any changing society, and that Taiwan cannot be excepted. Sha and novelist Chu Hsiu-chuan insist that there are good traditions – virginity, for one – that must be kept. Chu even argues against women pursuing equal rights. "Just think about it," she says. "In our society, men bring home the money, but their wives control it. This doesn't happen in Western society."

Lee Yuan-chen of the Awakening Foundation views the changing times differently. She is perhaps more aggressive in her thinking and in her conversion of thought to action than most of her contemporaries. Lee is determined to see women being treated fairly as men in every aspect. "Women are equally capable of contributing to society," she says.

Hsu looks forward to a calmer relationship between the sexes. "I am not asking to compete with men," she says. "I simply want to see people freed of sexism, to see men and women interacting harmoniously." She predicts that both men and women will strike a more neutral ground in their relationships with each other.

In the meantime, women's organizations such as Awakening, Warm Life, Homemakers', and Modern Women are vigorously calling for legislators to reconsider and revise some of the provisions of the Family Law, Divorce Law, and Labor Law that give women several serious disadvantages to personal and professional growth. Although these women's organizations make their demands known in ways that are still a far cry from the more strident actions of women's movements in the West, many Chinese women continue to look at them with disapproval. Demonstrating, shouting, petitioning, and expressing non-traditional views on sex, divorce, and women are considered unfeminine and threatening.

It seems that there are men who would like to be prepared when the strong woman surfaces. The Taipei City Government's Department of Social Affairs is planning to set up what it will call the Gentleman's Institute. It will present programs that will cultivate modern Chinese men, and teach them how to establish relationships with women on an equal and rational basis.

Huang Kuang-kuo is reserving his conclusion. He welcomes the changes, but he is unsure whether the new feminism in women as well as in some men will truly affect the traditions that have long defined the relationship between a man and a woman. "Traditions die hard," he says.