Taiwan Presidential Race Showcases Women's Increasing Role
Taiwan appears all but certain to elect a female president
on Saturday, underscoring the vast political gains women have made over the
island's decades-long transition from authoritarianism to thriving democracy.
While the Democratic Progressive Party's Tsai
Ing-wen would hardly be the first Asian woman elected head of state, she would
be the first to rise to the top without having been the wife, daughter or
sibling of a powerful man.
About a third of the 113
lawmakers elected to the Legislative Yuan, Taiwan's parliament in the last
polls in 2012 were women. In Asia, only East Timor has a higher percentage, according to the
Inter-Parliamentary Union. Women make up about 20 percent of the U.S. Congress.
The picture is much different in China, the
one-party communist behemoth which claims Taiwan as its own territory. No women
sit on the Politburo Standing Committee, the apex of communist power, and just
two on the 25-member Politburo one rung below it.
Tsai, who holds a Ph.D. from the London School
of Economics, has said that while a woman president would be a sign of further
social progress, the Taiwanese public seems more than ready for such a
development.
"Of course, there are some people in
Taiwan that are still rather traditional and they have some hesitation in
considering a woman president. But among the younger generation, I think they
are generally excited about the idea of having a woman leader. They think it is
rather trendy," Tsai said in a speech to the Council on Strategic and
International Studies in Washington, D.C. last year.
The fact that Tsai has prevailed in the
rough-and-tumble world of Taiwanese politics adds even greater burnish to her
credentials, said political scientist Alexander Huang of Taiwan's Tamkang
University.
"Taiwan people are smart, because they
know that Dr. Tsai has been able to deal with very strong contenders within the
DPP, and they are all senior politicians, they are all male politicians,"
Huang told The Associated Press in Taipei.
Most polls show Tsai, 59, holding a
double-digit lead over her rival Eric Chu of the ruling Nationalists.
Originally it had been an all-woman race, with
Tsai facing off against the Nationalist legislator Hung Hsiu-chu, who was
replaced after her abrasive style was seen as alienating voters.
While Taiwan traditionally was a strongly
patriarchal society — its Chinese Confucian culture was overlaid with 50 years
of Japanese colonialism — women have long enjoyed access to education and work
outside the home. Their success in politics is in part due to a constitutional
amendment and party quotas setting aside some seats for them, though women
currently exceed those quotas in parliament.
Taiwanese women played a high-profile role in
Taiwan's transition to democracy, beginning with the opposition movement in the
1970s. Annette Lu, who was a legislator before serving two terms as vice
president, was among the prominent activists arrested and tried in a seminal
1979 incident that galvanized the opposition and eventually led to the founding
of the DPP.
Even earlier, Taiwan boasted one of the world's
most famous Asian woman, Soong Mei-ling, the wife of authoritarian leader
Chiang Kai-shek, who relocated his Nationalist government to Taiwan in 1949
after the communist takeover of the Chinese mainland.
During World War II, Soong famously addressed the U.S. Congress. Decades
later she tried but failed to dictate the political succession following the
1988 death of her stepson, Chiang Ching-kuo.
Women in Taiwanese politics today achieved
their positions almost entirely through their own efforts, unlike other top
women leaders in Asia who owe their prestige at least in part to their family
connections.
Women in China appear to have substantially
fewer political opportunities. Even in the National People's Congress, the
country's rubber-stamp parliament, less than a quarter of the nearly 3,000
members are female. The country's most powerful female politician, vice premier
and Politburo member Liu Yandong, is the daughter of one of the communist
state's founding fathers.
Additionally, China routinely cracks down on
non-governmental groups it fears could challenge communist authority, shutting
off a key route to civic engagement. That included the detentions of a number
of prominent feminists last year ahead of International Women's Day, apparently
over their plans to raise public awareness over domestic violence.
Western Kentucky University political scientist
Timothy Rich, an expert on Taiwanese politics, said a win by Tsai could help
catalyze incremental change in China.
"After all, if China maintains its
position that Taiwan is part of China and Taiwan can elect a female leader,
then it stands to reason that the Communist Party will be under greater
pressure to appoint women to positions of power," he said.
Bodeen, Christopher.
"Taiwan Presidential Race Showcases Women's Increasing Role."
ABC News. Associated Press, 15
Jan. 2016. Web. 15 Jan. 2016.
Response:
This article
discusses the roles of women in Taiwan and similar areas. This article
certainly favors the idea of a woman leader. This would be its bias. I think it
is really cool that a country can have women running for president simply based
on merit. Most countries claim equality, but few will have women leaders who
would be winning in a presidential campaign. I think the connections this
author made are very interesting. He
commented on the fact that Taiwan is seen as part of China. He mentioned that
China is very far behind in the gender equality struggle. The fact that Taiwan,
being a part of China, is able to elect a female president shows improvement. I
agree with the author. It think it is really cool that the Taiwanese people are
so excited to take this step forward.
