Taiwan Today

For countless centuries, the women of China have been numbered among the world's most beautiful—fair of face and gracefully fine of form. They also have been rightly famed for the strength of char­acter with which they have held their fami­lies together in time of trouble and travail. The loveliness of Chinese women has not been accompanied by any fluttering weakness.

At the same time, women enjoyed no political rights and few specific social and cultural privileges in the China of only yes­terday. Their influence had to be exercised through the family circle and otherwise indirectly, not with the ballot or through any large-scale participation in social institutions.

Today's women of Taiwan are as fair. But life has been revolutionized in the last two decades. As of 1966, they enjoy equal status with men in every respect, and even continue the use of their maiden names after marriage. They can undertake virtu­ally any kind of work that men do. They hold high positions in government organizations, serve in the armed forces, engage in social work, and enter business and the professions.

Before the restoration of Taiwan to the Republic of China in 1945, women of the island were devoid of a political voice. Few of them went to high school and even fewer to college. They could work only in factories or as primary school teachers, nurses, midwives, and junior clerks. A mere handful became doctors of medicine. Women usually were compelled to quit their jobs when they married.

In the free China of today, there are women judges, attorneys, administrators, diplomats, engineers, journalists and other writers, professors, principals, and post­ masters. With rare exceptions, they are at liberty to continue their careers after marriage, and many of them do.

In other countries, women had to fight for their legal rights. Chinese women never needed to become suffragettes. Their rights were set forth in the Constitution of 1947. They are eligible to vote, as are men, on reaching the age of 20. A number of seats are reserved for them in parliamentary bodies of all levels.

Of the 1,521 delegates to the National Assembly. 206 are women. The Legislative Yuan, the highest lawmaking body, has 59 women in a membership of 466. Of the 82 members in the Control Yuan, the na­tion's governmental watchdog, 19 are wom­en. In the Taiwan Provincial Assembly, 10 of the 74 seats are held by women. The ratio in county and municipal councils is 123 to 907.

During the Japanese period, Taiwan had no woman representative at any level. In November of 1947, a women from Tai­nan in the south was elected to the National Assembly. In the following year, a Taiwanese woman was elected to the Legislative Yuan and one to the Control Yuan. The Provisional Taiwan Provincial Assembly was inaugurated in December, 1951, with 50 male and 5 female members. The first county and municipal council members were elected from July, 1950, to January, 1951. Of the 883 seats, 69 went to women. The incumbent speaker of the Taitung County Council in southeastern Taiwan is a woman.

Miss Lin Hsueh-mei was the first lady mayor in Chinese history. In May of 1960, at the age of 27, she defeated a male opponent in the mayoral election at Sanhsia, a farm town of 35,000 population 22 miles south­west of Taipei.

At her death on January 30, 1965, Miss Sophie Chang had been a member of the Examination Yuan Council for 20 years, one of the highest and most responsible positions in the government.

Departments of Elementary and Sec­ondary Education in the Ministry of Education are headed by women. The Taiwan Provincial Government has two women chiefs and a woman senior specialist in its Depart­ment of Health.

The achievements of Chinese women in the law may be unequaled—on a comparative population basis—in any other country. There are 22 women judges, 9 women prosecutors, and 62 women court clerks. Four women judges sit on the Supreme Court.

The first woman judge came to Taiwan from the mainland in 1946. The Taiwan High Court had its first woman presiding judge in 1948. In 1965, a woman judge was appointed to head the Pingtung District Court in the south.

Taiwan got its first woman attorney in 1947, also from the mainland. The first island-born woman lawyer was Miss Su Kang, who passed the bar examination in 1958. Near­ly a third of judges, prosecutors, and court clerks of today are island-born.

Before World War II, Taiwan had a university, a university preparatory school, and colleges of commerce, en­gineering, and agriculture. But all of them were for men only, and usually Japanese. Graduates of girls' high schools had to go to Japan for advanced studies. A small number went to the Chinese mainland.

Progress in Education

To make up for the shortage of women teachers from Japan during the war, the Imperial Governor approved the establishment of a private girls' college in Taipei (then called Taihoku) early in 1940. Even so students were mostly Japanese.

The progress in women's education dur­ing the last 20 years is astounding. Of 2,983 college students in 1946, there were 54 girls. Present college enrollment totals 64,010, of whom 18,438 are girls. Between 1947 and 1964, the number of women teachers in colleges and universities increased from 51 to 866.

There are more than 40 coeducational institutions of higher learning in Taiwan. In addition, there are five girls' colleges, four in Taipei and one in Taichung. At the secondary level, there are 28 girls' high schools, 17 girls' vocational schools, and 2 girls' normal schools. Before 1945, all girls' schools were headed by men. Most of them are now administered by women. All primary schools are coeducational. Of the 51,933 teachers in the 1964-65 academic year, 19,842 were women.

Famous Physicist

In academic fields, the most famous Chinese woman is Dr. Wu Chien-shiung, professor of physics at Columbia University. In 1956, she helped two Chinese male physicists disprove the Law of Parity. They were Nobel Prize winners in 1957. In the following year, she became the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate of science from Princeton University.

Two other Chinese women enjoy exceptional academic prestige in the United States. In 1963, Harvard University con­ferred the Ph.D. degree on Miss Tao Tien-wen, a Chinese pathologist. In 1964, Miss Hsiao Hsiao-ping became the second woman to receive a doctorate of electrical engineer­ing from Purdue University.

Taiwan is one of the healthiest areas in the Far East. There are more than 5,000 physicians, including 377 women. Of the women doctors, 138 specialize in gynecology and obstetrics. Nearly a third of women doctors have their own clinics and hospitals. Two of them are members of the Taiwan Provincial Assembly.

Of some 2,000 pharmacists on the is­land, about 250 are women. More than 10 of them are teaching in medical schools and several are operating pharmaceutical plants.

Under Japanese rule, nursing was not considered as really respectable. Most nurses were only primary school graduates. In 1947 the government set up a four-year school of nursing and midwifery in Taipei to train junior high school graduates. In addition to four schools of nursing and a college of nursing, one university and one college have departments of nursing. The number of registered nurses totals 3,766.

Nurses at military hospitals are trained at the National Defense Medical Center. Miss Chow Mei-yu, dean of nursing of the Medical Center, is a major general in the Chinese Army, the only woman to hold that rank. She is the founder of the army nursing system of China and the only Chi­nese member of the Expert Committee on Nursing of the World Health Organization.

Women's league

Chinese women's service in the armed forces is not limited to nursing. Several thousand members of the Women's Army Corps help conduct educational activities and recreation programs. As political officers, they give lectures on current events, lead discussions on the enemy's situation, edit newspapers, teach songs and dances, and cheer the wounded and the ill.

Closely connected with women's military service are the activities of the Chinese Women's Anti-Aggression League, founded by Madame Chiang Kai-shek in April, 1950. Mrs. Chen Cheng, widow of Vice President Chen Cheng, is vice chairman. With head­quarters in Taipei, the League has 52 branches in Taiwan and 5 overseas.

Membership exceeds 232,000. Included are legislators, professional women, housewives, students, factory workers, and farm women. The League supports those on the front lines and strengthens the morale of those behind the lines. Activities are centered on the armed forces and military dependents.

The biggest project of the League is construction of housing for military depen­dents. From 1956 to mid-1965, it had completed 25,000 units for low-echelon mili­tary personnel.

Policewomen were introduced to Taiwan in 1948 with the opening of a training class at the Taiwan Police Academy. Since then, 185 policewomen have been graduated.

Miss Chen Mei-chuan, a graduate of the Nanking Police Academy, has served in the police for more than 20 years. She was the first chief of the Taipei Policewomen's Corps and is now deputy chief of the Provin­cial Police Administration's Press and Liai­son Office.

Miss Hu Tao-hsing, incumbent chief of the Taipei Policewomen's Corps, was a class­mate of Miss Chen. In 1963, she was given a concurrent post as deputy chief of the Fourth Bureau of the Taipei Municipal Police Headquarters.

According to the Taiwan Provincial Department of Reconstruction, 776,289 women, or 13.4 per cent of the 5,785,889 members of the female population, were gainfully em­ployed in 1963. Of this number, more than 120,000 were working in factories. Textiles topped the list with 60,512. Then came food processing, 13,045; earthenwares, 9,340; and chemicals, 8,580.

Miss Vivian Wu, board chairman of the Tai Yuan Textile Mill Company, is the most prominent woman industrialist. Her husband, Yen Tjing-ling, is board chairman of the Yue Loong Motor Company, free China's only auto manufacturer.

Civic leader, Too

In 1948, the Yens built their textile mill at Hsinchu in northern Taiwan with 20,000 spindles shipped from Shanghai. The number of spindles has increased to 35,000, operated by more than 2,000 workers. Among the 24 textile mills in Taiwan, Tai Yuan holds 18.7 per cent of the export quota to the United States. The mill was the first in the Taiwan industry to go to eight-hour shifts around the clock. In 1961, Miss Wu was elected chairman of the Taipei International Women's Club, the first Chinese so honored. She is now chairman of the Zonta Club of Taipei. Zonta is an international organization composed of distinguished professional women.

Of the 33,578 women engaged in commerce at the end of 1963, the greater part—25,578—was in wholesale and retail trade. The rest of the breakdown was: money and banking, 6,994; insurance, 992; and real estate, 14.

Miss Chou Wen-chi is free China's cosmetics tycoon. She is general manager of the Ming Sing Chemical Co. Ltd., maker of the widely marketed "Florida Water" line.

The company was established by her father in Shanghai a few years before the birth of the Chinese Republic. After the Communist takeover of the mainland, she reactivated the company in Taiwan with a few former employees. The number of products has increased from 2 to 18. They have been exported to such countries as the United States, Thailand, and Singapore.

While on the mainland, Miss Chou was one of 13 women judges. She is now chair­man of the Taipei Municipal Association of Cosmetics and Daily Necessities. Of all the trade associations in Taiwan, this is the only one headed by a woman.

In the mass communications of pre­ war Taiwan, women worked only as radio announcers. The first woman reporter after the restoration was Miss Shen Yuan-chang. She came from the Fukien Central Daily News to join the Shin Sheng Pao, organ of the Taiwan Provincial Government. Al­though now a grandmother, she is still as­sociated with that newspaper.

There are some 40 women reporters in Taiwan. Of announcers for the 57 radio stations of the island, nearly four-fifths are women. Miss Nancy Yu is publisher of the English-language China Post. She started in 1952 with a two-page paper and a circulation of 2,000 Today the Post is a six-page paper. Circulation has doubled again and again.

Miss Chang Ming is the only woman city editor in free China. She has held down the city desk of the Shin Sheng Pao for more than 10 years. Before coming to Taiwan, Miss Chang was Nanking cor­respondent of the Shen Pao, Shanghai.

Many former women reporters have become columnists, fiction writers, and pub­lishers of women's magazines. They can say what they please, and speak up for their sex.

Women of free China are fair of face and still as popular with their men as ever. With all their ventures into new fields, they arc the same helpmates as before, and still among the best wives and mothers in the world.