The modern women's movement in Taiwan : the changing role of Taiwanese women in a conscious and collective struggle toward equality

Abstract

Traditionally, Taiwanese women were seen to be inferior to Taiwanese men and were not seen as fully being persons as men were. For centuries, Taiwanese women were kept in the home, and they were not allowed to access formal education, to work outside their home, or to participate in the public sphere. However, this bad situation for Taiwanese women has been changing ever since the beginning of the twentieth century. Gradually, Taiwanese women have gained a right to education, marriage, work, and political expression, and thus the role of Taiwanese women today seems to be very different from what it was a hundred years ago. In particular, the increasing educational opportunities at all levels have helped make Taiwanese women more aware of their subordinate status and how to ameliorate their situation. In fact, the modern women's movement in Taiwan, which started in the early 1970s, was the consequence of Taiwanese women having their conscious and collective voices towards equality transformed into action by organizing themselves to struggle for change. The three stages of Taiwan's modern women's movement marked its growth and the changing social environment. This thesis addresses the development of the modern women's movement in Taiwan during the last two decades, and uses the Gender and Development (GAD) approach, an alternative approach that tends to be more transformative in nature, to examine the agenda of the modern women's movement in Taiwan in three different stages in order to determine whether or not the GAD approach will serve as an effective tool for future use by the modern women's movement in Taiwan.