I've said a zillion times before - though Google isn't giving me my old post on this - that Taiwan has the best gender equality in Asia, and is easily the best country in Asia to be a woman (either foreign or local).
And apparently my view on this has been corroborated by statistics!
But, I've also been quite clear in the past that Asia isn't exactly a region known for having a fantastic record on gender equality, so saying that Taiwan is "the best" in the region doesn't mean much. I mean, this ranking from a different source rated the Philippines as the 'most gender equal country in Asia' in 2018, and...um. It's a country where one can't get divorced (divorce being a right that helps all genders and is necessary in any country working towards gender equality) and can't get an abortion (an essential right of women to control their own bodies). It is not possible to say with a straight face that a country has gender equality when basic rights such as divorce and abortion are not permitted.
The rest of the list is just as much of a joke. None of these countries are places where women, generally, are treated equally or where women have the same opportunities as men.
So, for Taiwan topping the rankings - as determined by an outside body as Taiwan is not in the UN, meaning that no UN statistics where Taiwan would rank significantly are accurate - is nice, but it's not so much clearing a hurdle as doing a little skip in a hopscotch game.
Sure - Taiwan has a high rate of female political representation, higher than many Western countries. The gender discrimination laws for the workplace are quite clear, and when enforceable they actually seem to mean something. Abortion is legal and so is divorce (though the divorce laws are not exactly fully modern). The government is trying to push gender equality. Anecdotally, women seem to have a stronger presence in accounting and finance here than in Western countries. There is a pay gap, but it's less than other Asian countries.
The streets are generally safe for women. Being pressured into an arranged marriage would be exceedingly rare, and resources do exist for abused women. It's not even that odd now for women to choose to remain single or not have children. And, of course, we have a female president - something the US has never had. And she's unapologetically single and wore pants at her inauguration: something I'm not sure many Americans would accept, even in 2019.
But.
Domestic violence is a real problem. We have no idea what actual rape statistics are, because most women don't report when they are raped. It's difficult to speak out about sexual violence without pressing charges thanks to Taiwan's insane libel laws. There is a gender wage gap and nobody is really sure how big it is (and it's uneven across different industries). Many women can't afford birth control because it's not covered by national health insurance (even for treatment of other medical issues - not that that should matter!). Unmarried women can't receive fertility treatment, there are some ridiculous laws surrounding abortion (e.g. needing the husband's consent) and divorce (it's difficult to get one if both parties don't agree, with the party who wants the divorce often having to prove their partner did something to justify their ending the marriage).
Even when serving in some of the nation's highest offices, one might be subjected to utterly preposterous sexist remarks. Women's issues are used by both ends of the political spectrum to score points, without any real desire to see through justice for said women. Important gender equality reforms are often ignored. There is no rape shield law, at least since the last time I researched that issue. Adultery laws are a straight-up horrorshow. Religious practices often include ingrained sexist beliefs.
And those are just the obvious issues.
So yeah. Great. Okay. We're the most gender equal country in Asia. Woohoo!
But Asia is a pretty gender-unequal place. Female infanticide, the gender pay gap, the employment gap, education gaps, domestic violence, lack of access to basic health and reproductive care: these are all endemic issues in Asia. So, that distinction doesn't exactly mean that Taiwan is killing it in terms of treating women well.
It just means we're treating women a little less badly than other places.
All I can say is that, to be fair, the entire world is a pretty gender-unequal place: women's political participation, for example, is lower in Germany, the US and the UK than it is in Taiwan.
So we treat women a little less badly than most of the rest of the world.
That's good, but we still need to do better.
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