Voting in Taiwan: Gender, Age and Wild Speculation

Yes, yes, this picture is meant to be tongue-in-cheek (or tunic-in-loins)

Recently, political scientist Nathan Batto wrote about youth turnout in the 2020 vote on his blog, Frozen Garlic. He speculated that gender might be an interesting area to explore in voter differences, as women tend to support the KMT more than men by a surprising amount:

Newcomers to Taiwanese politics are always shocked that women are about 5% more pro-KMT than men since the much-publicized gender gap in the United States favors the more progressive party. My suspicion is that older women are much more conservative than younger women (ie: the age difference for voting behavior is much larger for women than men), but I don’t have any hard evidence of that right now.

This seems likely. The youth surge in 2020 was overwhelmingly pro-DPP -- men and women both. Women might support the KMT at a higher rate than men overall, but that doesn't mean a majority of women support the KMT. This all points to a difference in beliefs between younger and older Taiwanese women.

Like Frozen Garlic, I don't have any hard evidence either, but that won't stop me from throwing the nerdblogging equivalent of a kegger to explore the topic. 

Although the main cleavage between the two parties is still China, these days it's not ridiculous to consider the KMT the more socially conservative party and the DPP the slightly more socially liberal one, in some areas. (Marriage equality? Yes! Labor rights? Not really.)

Beyond a little speculation that older Taiwanese women are more likely to be KMT voters (and more conservative) than younger ones, Frozen Garlic stopped there. Freewheeling political analyst Donovan Smith agreed with him, and pointed out that he was in a position to speculate wildly about why this might be (but refrained from doing so).

I also tend to agree, and because I'm literally just a hobbyist, I'm at liberty to go hog-wild and talk about why.

Of course, a full and reliable answer would require real research. I'm not in a position to do that research, so the best I can offer is Lao Ren Cha Gone Wild.

So if you think Donovan is free to "speculate wildly", then when it comes to me, grab your tunic and gird your loins because here we go. 

Let me lay out the few key points before we begin. 

First, that (admittedly imperfect) parallels can be drawn to the political histories of other countries.

Second, that higher KMT support among women probably is driven by older women, and this has a lot to do with intentional targeting by the KMT on many fronts, over several decades.

Third, that the opposition which coalesced into the Tangwai and DPP was not necessarily friendlier to women than the KMT in the early years, and the feminist movement's initial aim for political neutrality meant that they were not a direct conduit turning women to the DPP. In fact, the Taiwanese feminism of the 1970s was, by today's standards, simply another flavor of conservatism.

And finally, that while there is a lot of overlap between social conservatism and KMT support, there are also areas of divergence -- women might support the KMT or DPP for their own reasons, which may not intersect entirely with where they fall on the spectrum of social liberalism/conservatism.

Even more importantly, I'm not attempting to explain why all women who support the KMT do so. There are many reasons, motivations and interplays of personal preference and societal conditions. The best I can do is offer a few reasons from history on why women support the KMT at a slightly higher rate than men.

I am not a Taiwanese woman, however, so I can't claim to speak for them. I suppose I count as "older" now, but I'm younger than the women I'll be discussing. I've talked with a few local female friends about this, even though they aren't KMT supporters themselves and also cast a slightly broader net, which resulted mostly in articulations of the varied reasons why individual women support the KMT and further speculation that this was almost certainly driven by older women. Women I spoke to cited their mothers, grandmothers or aunts, not themselves. This is not the same as actual research, but insights from those conversations have informed my own analysis. 

This is a (somewhat) global phenomenon

The reason why (I think) older Taiwanese women are likely more conservative than younger ones, and thus possibly more likely to vote KMT, is that this is not a phenomenon unique to Taiwan. Older people, in many countries, to tend to vote for the more conservative party than younger ones. The US and UK are clear examples of this.

Research shows that political views don't tend to change as much with age as folk wisdom indicates, although if this does happen, the trend is toward conservatism. This may be the by-product of what generation one was raised in. In other words, social norms tended to be more conservative in the past than they are now, and people stick with what they know. There's no reason why this wouldn't also be true for Taiwan.

Of course, this trend doesn't necessarily hold outside the West. South Korean youth have helped propel center/liberal-leaning parties to victory, but they tend to turn away fairly quickly and young South Korean men are much less likely to support them. In Japan, the youth seem to trend conservative. However, when comparing democratic systems, it seems to me -- again, wild speculation time -- that most Taiwanese would be as or more likely to measure their country against Western democracies than neighboring ones. 

If I'm right, there is surely a discussion of white supremacism and cultural imperialism to be had here, which could be its own post. However, it's also important to point out that Taiwan also has historic reasons to look westward, as its friendliest ally has generally been the US (despite some, well, bumps), and biggest neighbor has always been openly hostile. 

You might be thinking, okay -- but what does this have to do with older women? Aren't we talking about the gender dimension?

Yes, but the same holds true. Although women identifying with the more progressive party holds true across generations in the US, younger women are far less likely to be conservative than older ones, and white women are more likely to be Republican, period.

What's more, research also shows that while women across all age groups tend to be more liberal than men, that the tendency of older voters to be more conservative still holds. 

Although British women were once more likely to vote conservative than British men, that's changed in the past few years, and younger British women are more likely to vote Labour. 

In other words, the notion that women will be more likely to support the "more progressive" party because that party is more likely to advocate for their interests doesn't actually hold up when you look at the details. Women are not a bloc: they're divided by race, class and age. If that's true in the US and UK, why shouldn't it be true in Taiwan, as well?

Authoritarianism is also anti-feminist

In Women's Movements in Twentieth-Century Taiwan, Doris Chang beautifully lays out the women's movements women from these cohorts would have experienced. You can read a summarized version of much of her work here, with institutional access.

Essentially, although autonomous (not government-controlled) women's associations existed in Taiwan in the Japanese era, and in China, the May Fourth Movement also held a more liberal ideology toward women's place in society, these events are now almost entirely beyond living memory. 

Japanese-era attempts at organizing women to fight for equal rights were of course washed away by the arrival of the KMT. For the May Fourth Movement, these ideals were intentionally attacked.

I'm going to quote at length here because not everybody has institutional access, and I'm going to lose my own access soon:

From 1927 on, radical women, including feminist women, were under attack not only from conservative elements in Chinese society generally but also directly from the Kuomintang....

In the 1925-1927 period....the left wing of the KMT trained women organizers, set up women's unions, provided marriage and divorce bureaus, and educated local women in the meaning of the revolution. Several hundred women were trained to work as propagandists with the army. But after Chiang's coup, these women were in direct danger. Only a handful of the top leaders were able to escape the purges that followed....

In early 1934, Chiang Kai-shek launched the New Life Movement from his Nanchang headquarters....With the endorsement of the national government, the movement spread and became a part of the official ideology....It was at this time that Chiang looked to Germany, rather than the Soviet Union, as a model....The new order of fascism, with its emphasis on military power and total control, struck a chord of response within the KMT. So too did its emphasis on the patriarchal family and male supremacy.

This destruction of the left wing of the KMT by the right had a great effect on the course of women's issues in Taiwan after the KMT's arrival.

Neo-Confucianism and the New Life movement imitated a sort of modernism and claimed to promote greater civic participation, but were fundamentally illiberal, tradition-oriented and, as some have speculated, fascist, and this greatly affected the nature of the women's associations promoted by the KMT.

These associations were spearheaded by Chiang Kai-shek's wife, Soong Mei-ling -- if not as the founder, then as chair. Her Christian views, which were not incongruous with New Life, likely also played a role. (In fact I've often wondered if that's the reason why there are so many churches on Xinsheng 新生 -- New Life -- Road.)

These included the National Women's League 婦聯會 (which I believe is the same as the China Women's Federation, but please correct me if I'm wrong) and the Women's Union, established by a KMT committee. There was also the exclusionary International Women's Club, open only to elites.

Soong Mei-ling might have chaired women's organizations but she did not fight for women's rights. (From Wikimedia)

Soong took such initiatives because allowing "civic society" to exist was considered important to prevent (more) rebellion against the authoritarian KMT, but only if the government was solidly in control of them. The idea was to promote civic participation, but in a pro-establishment way. 

Soong's women's associations were organized around supporting the nation -- the Republic of China, not Taiwan -- and the traditional duties of home and family. They promoted motherhood, domestic sanitation and "being a wife that a husband can rely on, so our soldiers can keep on fighting".

These organizations were designed to prevent women's movements from gaining a political voice, and to keep women in traditional roles, not to help them speak out and break out. Explicitly founded on the illiberal ideals of New Life, there was no chance of any sort of reform or women's equality movement arising from them.

It's no surprise that many (though not all) of the women raised in such a society would have carried the echoes of these social norms from their younger years as they grew older. Surely there were women who disagreed with the roles society had given them, however, whether they were from Taiwan or China, they would be aware that the punishment for vocally dissenting from these prescribed norms was, at best, government scrutiny and at worst a trip to the prison at Green Island.

Did this attempted social control create women who were more conservative than men? It's difficult to say. I do think, however, that it influenced a few generations of women t0 be more likely to remain loyal to the KMT.

As far as I'm aware, there was no China Men's Federation / National Men's League. Women got their own group because, despite being half the population, they were Other. Within the greater attempt to subjugate society, there was a targeted attempt to subjugate and control women.

This sounds like a fantastic way to get women to hate you, but that's probably not what happened. 

These women's associations put a friendly face on the underlying misogyny: spinning acceptance of male supremacy into seeming like a form of patriotism. Anti-communism with feminine characteristics. 

Don't be shocked that it mostly worked. In the US, Republicans do it too. Where do you think all those white women voters talking about loving "America" and "family values" came from? This can be a very successful technique to turn targeted demographics under the right conditions. There may also be cultural reasons why it worked, but I won't speculate on those and do not want to overstate the culture factor.

The opposition groups that were quietly forming, which would later coalesce into the Tangwai, appear to have been mostly male. Additionally, they did not seem particularly concerned with the status of women -- at least not yet. In Chang's words: 

Due to the male-dominated structure of Taiwan's democracy movement, the professed ideals of liberty, justice and equality did not necessarily translate into male activists' equal treatment of and respect for women activists. 

(This is still kind of true, by the way.)

Okay, so what did the Tangwai have to offer women? Not much, at that point. Is it surprising that they didn't join en masse?

This is also why I don't think trying to tie women's political affiliations to "Taiwanese culture" is helpful: although the KMT could not exert perfect mind control, their distorting effect on Taiwan was so palpable and severe that it's very difficult to say how Taiwan would have evolved culturally without them. 

The 1970s women's movements were liberal for their age, but conservative for ours

What The Feminine Mystique -- a deeply problematic book in some ways, but the cornerstone of second-wave feminism -- did for American feminism in the early 1960s, Annette Hsiu-lien Lu's New Feminism (新女性主義) did for Taiwan a decade later. She was not the only feminist of this era, but was indeed one of the founders of the that era's Taiwanese feminist movement, and her beliefs and the impact they made serve as an interesting case study.

Annette Lu from Wikimedia

While it was a turning point for Taiwan, certainly not all women would have boarded the women's rights train, even as Lu sought to equate women's rights with human rights. Movements take time, and this is no exception. 

Martial Law was still very much in force, so it wasn't really any safer to start expressing feminist views than it had been for the past two decades. Lu herself was subject to surveillance, harassment and eventually arrest. After decades of being told to accept their place in a patriarchal society -- and having that order backed up with very real threats of harassment and violence -- 1970s Taiwanese feminism was never going to win the hearts and minds of all. No early movement does.

Some accuse Lu of simply appropriating Western-style feminism and importing it to Taiwan. This is not true, although her own brand of relational feminism crafted to suit Taiwanese society at the time was not without its problems. 

Again, I quote at great length to get around barriers to academic work: 

Although the substitution of “human rights” for “women’s rights” and contributions over entitlements might be regarded as a rhetorical strategy to make her “new feminism” compatible with the conservatism of Taiwan in the 1970s, Lü in fact had strong points of disagreement with American feminism as she had encountered it. First, Lü rejected the “sameness feminist” position that equality meant elimination of gender differences.

Supporting instead “difference feminism,” Lü argued that women should not strive to be like men, but should be “who they are.” In effect, she endorsed women's pursuit of higher education and professional careers while maintaining traditional gender roles within the family. Lü championed the image of the new woman who “holds a spatula with her left hand, and a pen with her right hand (左手拿鍋鏟,右手握筆桿)(Lü, 1977b,32;   Lee, 2014,35). She furthermore advocated that talented women should show their femininity by using dress and makeup to cultivate a “soft” and “beautiful” appearance. 

Finally, understanding that sexual liberation would be a flashpoint for resistance in Taiwan’s highly conservative society of the 1970s, Lü proclaimed that “new feminism” endorsed “love before marriage, marriage then sex” (Lü, 1977a, 152–154). Hence, Lü fought against institutional gender discrimination, while simultaneously upholding certain traditional standards of femininity, domesticity, female beauty, and chastity. Lü's relational feminism, as Chang writes,“suggested that one's individual freedom should be counterbalanced by fulfillment of specific obligations in family and in society”(Chang, 2009, 92). 

Despite Lü's concerted efforts to make feminism compatible with aspects of Confucianism [ed: I'd say Neo-Confucianism], and to avoid challenging Taiwan's capitalist socio-political order, she drew fire from conservatives, and was soon subjected to political pressure and government surveillance. The martial law regime feared any political radicalism, and treated Lü's women's movement as a potential anti-government activity. 

In other words, Lu -- who would go on to serve as Vice President under Chen Shui-bian -- was a "women can have it all" feminist. In favor of equal rights and opportunity, but still admonishing women to continue to perform traditional roles. Letting men off the hook from having to evolve their thinking, pushing a 'second shift' on women, and not holding any space for women to be "who they are", if they don't feel a traditional role fits them.

Her conservative views extend to love, marriage and sex, and generally, they don't seem to have changed very much in the intervening decades. 

You may be wondering what her current views are. In 2003 (the same year that the Ministry of Justice proposed a human rights bill that would have legalized same-sex marriage, which didn't pass), although Lu was Vice President at the time and devoted a lot of time to human rights, she remarked that AIDS was "God's wrath" for homosexuality (she insists she was misinterpreted but has never offered a coherent explanation of what she claims to have meant). 

Notably, some versions of that 2003 bill which included same-sex marriage credit Lu with the drafting. This source cites her as the convener of a related advisory group but does not mention same-sex marriage, and there's no evidence her commission was directly related to the bill. I don't know how this squares with her obviously homophobic comment in the same year, so all I can do is lay out the facts.

Now, 2003 might seem recent, but it was actually quite a long time ago in terms of the evolution of discourse and public belief around social issues. Has she evolved her thinking as well?

Not really. 

More recently, she's tried to evade the issue by saying she "supports" LGBT people but that the courts were wrong to find a ban on same-sex marriage "unconstitutional", using some rather dubious logic. She went on to say that while she has no issue with it, society isn't ready for it, and the Tsai administration should focus on that rather than legalization. That equates to keeping it illegal, but with more steps. She also helped found the Formosa Alliance, which was pro-independence but opposed to marriage equality.

That sure sounds like someone trying to have it both ways: to oppose marriage equality without openly admitting it. Like someone trying to obstruct without looking like an obstructionist, trying to politic her way out of admitting she's not really an ally.

She also appears to be opposed to modern sex education, saying it will lead to an "overflow" of sex, which should instead "have dignity" (anyone familiar with, well, sex can affirm that it is many things, but "dignified" isn't really one of them. At least if it's good sex.)

All that said, Lu was one of the few early feminists who took a political position on the green-blue divide: 

Inasmuch as the freedom to openly debate Taiwanese national identities was severely circumscribed under the martial-law regime of the Chinese Nationalist Party (i.e., Kuomintang or KMT), feminist activists strategically adopted a nonpartisan stance and refrained from discussion of this controversial topic (Chang, 2009: 160; Fan, 2000: 13–19, 26). Yun Fan posited that it was not until the era of democratisation in 1994 that most members of the Taipei Association for the Promotion of Women’s Rights (女權會, nüquanhui) explicitly voiced their support for Taiwan independence (Fan, 2000: 28–35). Hsiu-lien Lu (呂秀蓮, a.k.a. Annette Lu) was a notable exception to the political neutrality in Taiwan’s feminist community during the 1970s. As a citizen of Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan, she advocated that Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) should peacefully coexist as two ethnic Chinese states (H-l. Lu, 1979: 241).

What did that offer to the young women coming of age in the 1970s, and their mothers -- some of whom are still alive to vote? A choice between KMT-approved traditionalism, and a feminist ethos that, by attempting to render itself more palatable to Taiwanese society, became something that sounds more like conservatism today. 

Certainly, some women simply chose to walk away from both models. Many, however, would have chosen a perspective that fit somewhere within what public discourse was offering.

The KMT finally began listening -- somewhat -- to feminist groups after the lifting of Martial Law in the mid-1980s, and granted some of their requests (the legalization of abortion happened around this time). While Annette Lu was in prison, Lee Yuan-chen and others formed a publishing house to keep the message of Taiwanese women's movements alive. 

At the same time, while the DPP did have prominent female public figures (Chen Chu 陳菊 comes to mind), they weren't necessarily a beacon of women's equality.

 

Chen Chu, still in politics and one of my faves (WIkimedia)

The women's movement in general supported women voting across the political spectrum, and took pains to remain non-partisan. Of course, in that political climate, many of their adherents would have chosen the KMT. And chances are, they have simply stayed that way.

At the same time, their daughters and granddaughters have grown up decades later, after society had moved beyond Lu's "exhaust yourself trying to have it all" brand of feminism. More role models and more complex and varied discourse exists: there's simply more to choose from. It's no wonder that they don't seem anywhere near as interested in the same values.

Where does that leave us, in terms of women's support for various parties throughout Taiwanese history?

It's Wild Speculation Time

So, there are certainly women who support the KMT due to their background regardless of their views on women's rights, and the same for the DPP. Then a women's movement came along, aiming (mostly) to be non-political, which pushed the post-Martial Law KMT to be a little more amenable to women's rights, while the DPP was not necessarily a beacon of egalitarianism for women. If you put it that way, it seems clear why the women's movement didn't necessarily move the party identification needle for women.

Liberal women might therefore have voted for either party, not necessarily providing a large bump to the DPP. Some disaffected "radicals" (whose beliefs we'd see as pretty normal today) were certainly around, but not enough to make a difference.

And those "liberal women"? The 1970s-80s movements were liberal for their time, but not liberal as we'd define the word now. By today's standards, they are conservative.

And they likely hold the same views today as they did then.

Is it any surprise that Millennial women (and the Zoomers who can vote), who never experienced those decades and have known only democracy and more contemporary forms of liberalism, would almost certainly be different?

Men, of course, lived through all of this too. But men have a history of not being affected as much by women's movements. One of the principal questions women's rights activists face now is essentially 'he for she': how do you get men to change?

In other words, men chose their political parties without really having to think too much about what those parties were saying about their position in society. As the dominant group in a patriarchal culture, that place was assured by both major parties, so they could choose purely based on other ideologies they held.

Perhaps this allowed "liberalism" to take on a different meaning for men, as some came to embrace it: free to ignore the back-and-forth of the feminist cause, and free to simply 'not see' the misogyny that didn't affect them, they might come to a more DPP-friendly political sensibility through simply looking at the KMT's past and deciding to support the party that pushed for democratization, instead. 

While I do think that older women trend far more conservative than younger women, and it's demonstrably true that Taiwanese women support the KMT at higher rates than men, I'm not sure this makes a case that women, as a whole, are more conservative than men. I would love to see a breakdown of the voting pattern of older vs. younger women, compared to that of older vs. younger men.

I bet you anything that the same trends we see in other countries holds true: political ideology tends to remain static, which is why older generations tend to be 'more conservative' as society liberalizes, but at the same time younger women are moving away from older ones ideologically. This may not show up in the data, however, perhaps because older women vote at higher rates, or because younger liberal women are more likely to turn to a smaller party instead of the DPP.

The party identification disparity is almost certainly not an artifact of the way the data was analyzed. It's highly unlikely to be due to factors such as longevity (women have a longer life expectancy than men, so there ought to be more very old women than very old men). According to Frozen Garlic, older men and women vote at about the same rate, but very old men vote at a higher rate than very old women. 

I would be interested to see what happens with all of this in the next few years, as the KMT digs into the culture wars it's trying to manufacture. Will it push younger women to the DPP?

Anecdotally speaking, I do know at least one woman who hasn't tied her support of the KMT to conservative values.  A thirtysomething, she supports marriage equality, and the LGBTQIA+ community as well. She has a career and aims to excel in it. She loves her family but doesn't necessarily feel the need for a 'traditional' life. Things like living with a boyfriend are not beyond the pale. I'd consider her a liberal, but she was also a die-hard supporter of Han Kuo-yu and reviles President Tsai. 

I do not think she sees those things as remotely contradictory. She doesn't see the KMT as a socially conservative choice. Yet.

Targeted Marketing

This is my wildest speculation yet, so please don't expect academic rigor. 

Think about the older female Taiwanese conservatives you know, or have seen on news shows talking about how Ma Ying-jeou is "handsome" or Han Kuo-yu is "charismatic". 

No party in Taiwan has ever fielded a truly handsome man for president (Freddy Lim hasn't run...yet.)  However, the KMT has a habit of fielding candidates appealing to older women, and I suspect this is intentional.

Ma Ying-jeou was once described to me as "my mom's idea of what a good 'catch' for a husband should be". Apparently, he once came across as refined, educated and upstanding. I understand that he was once conventionally "attractive" but honestly, I can't get past those cold, dead eyes. 

Whereas Freddy...

                   

There's really just no comparison, is there?

Ahem. Anyway. My friends mostly don't agree with this assessment of Ma as a 'catch'. But their mothers and aunts often do! Even boring Eric Chu could be seen as a suitably "good" fellow if a woman could not snag herself a Ma. I guess.

Another way of putting this: the men the KMT fields for top positions tend to remind some women of their husbands or fathers.

Suffice it to say, Chen Shui-bian, Frank Hsieh and Tsai Ing-wen had no chance of winning the "aunties think he's handsome" vote. Although Chen has a certain charisma, it doesn't come from his looks. He might remind some of their lively friend, but perhaps not their dad. 

Tsai is an older woman herself, educated and refined. You'd think she'd attract those votes. But of course not: similar magnetic poles repel. She's everything their own mothers raised them not to be: single, childfree, leaning into her education and career. A woman like Tsai takes a look at the patriarchy and doesn't even bother to give it the finger before walking away and doing what she pleases. 

Shamelessly stolen from Chris Horton on Twitter. I hope he'll forgive me. Follow Chris Horton on Twitter!

The Ma dynamic seemed to play out with Han Kuo-yu. I think Han has a creepy look to him, personally. I don't know if the gambling, womanizing, temper and drinking rumors are true (well, we do know about some of it, seeing as he killed a guy and once beat up Chen Shui-bian.) 

But, there is a certain charisma about him that I can see some women finding appealing. It's not quite toxic masculinity (just look at the shiba inu t-shirts) but it's in the same genus.

He even slightly resembles Chiang Kai-shek who, for all his faults, was not physically unattractive -- his repulsiveness was on the inside. (Click the link.)

Han looks like he's good at making friends in local businesses and down at the town rechao 熱炒 place. Like he'll buy his wife a string of high-rise luxury condos and a BMW if she doesn't ask too much about his sketchy business, or helps him run it. A real Lin Xigeng type.

A friend once described Han -- as with Ma -- as the kind of man your older relatives would advise you to marry. 

To quote that friend -- after I gave her a look of utter horror -- "they think he's good looking, can be a provider and head of the family, and good at making money. They just expect husbands to cheat and gamble so they don't think that's important."

I cannot believe that most older Taiwanese women are influenced by this strategy, but the KMT wouldn't keep doing it if it didn't have some effect. Marketing is powerful. It's not an indictment of the target market when it works. They're even trying to export it to the "youth" with Wayne Chiang, despite the objective fact that the opposition has far more fanciable men.

Conclusions

There is so much I haven't explored here that I'd like to. Class surely plays a role, as it does in every other democracy. Is there a class divide in the voting behavior of Taiwanese women?

I have intentionally avoided too much discussion of "culture", because I don't think it's useful here. Culture is not static, and in any case, it's quite clear that how "Taiwanese culture" treats women has been deeply influenced, not only by the Japanese era (which allowed spaces for the modernization of women's spaces in some ways, but was deeply misogynist in others) but by the superimposition of the various pro-KMT "women's associations". What directions might Taiwanese culture have taken, if these colonizing influences had never imposed themselves on the country? I have no idea.

One area of culture I'd have liked to explore more is the way that traditional gender roles in Taiwan differ from the West, most notably (to me) in terms of accounting and financial responsibility. That women were entrusted not just with family budgets but often had a hand in running family businesses might offer insight into how the go-go-go capitalism of the Asian Tiger era affected women's views. 

Women's support for smaller parties would also be an interesting area to look into. Is it the case, as in Korea, that liberal women are turning not to the DPP but to smaller parties? I'd like to know. 

There is an entire contingent of families settled outside Taiwan, with Taiwanese heritage, where the older members are strong KMT supporters whereas their children and grandchildren may not be. Many of them can and do vote in Taiwan. They wouldn't have lived through the same things, and I have intentionally not discussed this group.

I have also stayed away from the most tempting argument: that a lot of older people were educated in a time when education was twisted to serve the KMT's goals and punish those who asked questions. First, although the Taiwanese education system has undergone reforms, I'm not sure it has changed enough. They're not making kids write about The Three Principles anymore, but neither are they really teaching critical thinking skills (which is not to say people don't develop them, just that they're not taught that in school). Second, because it would have affected women as well as men. 

All I can say is this: women are not a monolith. Even in Taiwan, they are not a singular voting bloc.

However, the trends we see are indeed real. It's easy to ascribe them to "culture", or worse, "Confucianism", and offer a few generalities about gender norms in East Asian societies. 

I think it's a lot more complicated than that, however, and has just as much to do with the history women of different generations lived through, and how they related to it. 

I've talked mostly about older women here, and almost completely ignored Millennials and the Zoomers who can vote. This is because I don't think the same trends will hold for them, and the reasons why should be fairly obvious: pan-green politics in Taiwan is a lot more woman-friendly than it used to be (though there's still some way to go), the old KMT attempts at subjugating women have ended, and there's an overall turn away from the KMT by the youth. 

It's impossible to wholly answer this question without doing dedicated research, which is not at all in my field. I hope, however, that this has provided a little historical insight into why women in general support the KMT at higher rates than men: that it's very likely a trend driven by older women rather than younger ones, and that there are likely large areas of overlap with social conservatism, but they're not exactly the same thing. That is, older women likely have their own reasons for supporting the DPP or KMT which may or may not align with their social views.

By the way, I've downloaded all the PDFs of the articles I've quoted here, so I'll be able to refer back to them when I lose institutional access. I am also fairly easy to find online. Email exists. Just saying.

Taiwan's anti-stalking laws are getting much-needed reform

I think this picture metaphorically depicts the current state of Taiwan's anti-stalking laws.

Years ago, the ex-boyfriend of someone I once knew was engaging in aggressive stalking and harassment. We're talking the stuff of horror movies here. Despite showing up at her work and later the same night outside her front door as she was coming home (!), it struck me that there seemed to be so little the police could do. She called them and they came, but they weren't able to guarantee her safety in any meaningful way. She had been planning to end her time in Taiwan in the near future, but it was clear that staying would have been a dangerous proposition regardless. I don't know the extent to which his actions hastened her departure, but it almost certainly had some effect. 

We're not in touch anymore, so I'm not willing to include any more detail than that. However, what remains with me is this: Taiwanese law enforcement could not or would not do anything to make Taipei a place where she could safely remain.

Now, imagine if she had not been planning to leave, or was from here and either had nowhere else to go, or didn't want to leave her life behind just to rid herself of a stalker. 

That's not the only story I've heard; I'm intentionally not including more recent tales from others I don't know the extent to which doing so -- even with permission -- might impact their safety. Others have been in the news, most recently a woman in Pingtung who had reported her harassment over several months to police, but was still killed by her harasser. 

Given all this, Taiwan's new draft amendment to improve anti-stalking laws in Taiwan is mind-bogglingly overdue and hasn't been reported on nearly enough, although taiwanreporter has consistently highlighted the importance of this subject for some time, as has the Taipei Times.

Here is what the new law would do: 

According to the bill, the police will have the right to issue a written warning to a stalker or someone accused of harassment, once the victim's report can be corroborated.

If the accused disregards the police warning, the victim, police or prosecutors can seek a restraining order from the court, the bill states. Currently, restraining orders are issued only in cases of harassment or violence within a family or between couples.

Under the draft bill, the maximum penalty for stalking and/or harassment is five years in prison or a fine of NT$500,000 (US$17,667), and it allows preventive detention if the offender is deemed a likely recidivist. [The current fines are far lower: see below for more information]. 

It broadens the definitions specified in both the Sexual Harassment Prevention Act and Domestic Violence Prevention Act and makes them applicable in almost any situation, not just in a home, workplace, or school.

In particular, the definition of harassment has been extended to include making unwanted advances on someone.

You might be wondering if it's really true that currently, the police can only issue a restraining order in cases of harassment between family members or cohabiting couples, and whether most relevant laws are truly only applicable at home, work or school. What's more, are the current penalties truly so low? Are people being stalked in situations outside these narrow definitions truly left without protection? 

The answer to all of these is "yes". 

You may also wonder how it got to be that way. The problem is that work, home and school were each targeted with specific laws, with no umbrella anti-stalking or anti-harassment law covering all situations beyond one very general and low-stakes provision in one very broad law. Since I am not constrained by inches or word count, I have the space to sift through these laws. So let's do that, and take stock of where they currently fall short. 

I'm probably not including every relevant sub-code or detail of every pertinent act and regulation because I'm not superhuman, but there are three that stand out: the Domestic Violence Prevention Act (家庭暴力防治法), the Sexual Harassment Prevention Act (性騷擾防治法) and the laughably inadequate Social Order Maintenance Act (社會秩序維護法). Also relevant are the Gender Equity Education Act (性別平等教育法) and the Gender Equality in Employment Act (性別工作平等法). 

The Domestic Violence Prevention Act covers harassment, stalking (which is specifically defined) and other abuse by family members, including spouses and ex-spouses, relatives and cohabiting or formerly cohabiting couples. This is the act that allows for restraining orders to be issued, and allows for fines of up to NT$100,000 for contravening court rulings, including restraining orders and orders to relocate. However, it does not cover non-familial, non-cohabiting relationships -- so it would not cover a creepy date, friendship-turned-sour or terrifying ex that you didn't live with. 

The Sexual Harassment Prevention Act covers school and workplace sexual harassment, and stipulates fines of up to NT$100,000 (and higher for certain professions) and imprisonment for up to two years for unwelcome touching. The act includes threats, offense and intimidation, inundation (of behavior, approaches or images), creating a sense of fear or hostility or impinging on rights and interests of a person within the organization. Although the organization is meant to conduct its own investigation, it must report to municipal authorities and can be punished for not investigating appropriately. This act does not mention stalking, but the focus on the reaction of the targeted person to the unwelcome behavior might potentially cover this.

The Gender Equity in Employment Act and the Gender Equity Education Act cover any sexual harassment at school or work not covered by the Sexual Harassment Prevention Act, and include language against discrimination (which includes bullying or verbal harassment) based on gender or sexual orientation. Neither clearly stipulate that harassment or bullying of transgender workers or students is included in this definition, and neither use the term "stalking". 

The Social Order Maintenance Act attempts to cover everything else. This is the one that would cover that creepy date, rando who follows you or ex you never lived with. However, it does not define "stalking", saying only that it prohibits "stalking another person without justifiable reasons despite having been dissuaded" (emphasis mine).  It stipulates a fine of not more than NT$3,000 for stalking, and includes defacing someone else's property, such as a house or car. 

I have no idea what a "justifiable reason" for stalking would be, and am nonplussed that this language would be included in such a wide-reaching law. It goes without saying that NT$3,000 is barely a punishment; it's essentially a stalking fee, which if you have to pay it at all amounts to permission to keep on stalking. The law mentions "dissuasion" but makes no provisions for issuing restraining orders against such stalkers. Police may, however, restrain a person who is -- and I am quoting the law here -- "caught red-handed in the commission of an offense". 

It's terrifying to me that this is the only law under which my then-friend could have sought redress, and it would not have even stipulated so much as a restraining order.

Clearly, this change has been long overdue. Every time there is a widely-reported case (or number of cases) that could potentially have been prevented by more concrete anti-stalking laws, there is an outcry, followed by a call for reform, followed by what seems to be...no reform. 

It happened in 2018, when the Executive Yuan approved a draft bill to bolster harassment and "pestering" laws. That seems to have gone nowhere, as it did not have the support of women's rights groups. From the Taipei Times: 

While they support the idea of the bill, [women's rights groups] said its current version would not provide enough protection to people who are being harassed or stalked.

Once a person files a complaint with police, the police are required to spend three months investigating the allegations, which is both time consuming and fails to provide a victim with timely protection, Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation deputy chief executive Jasmine Bai (白智芳) said.

It happened again in 2020, when the National Police Agency proposed anti-stalking legislation. It's not clear if that's the same proposal that was lambasted once again by women's groups, as by November 2020 the anti-stalking proposal under discussion came from the Ministry of the Interior (I was following this issue, and couldn't figure it out then, either).  This time, criticisms of the proposal included a lack of immediate tools to protect victims, and equating stalking to sexual harassment, even though not all stalking is sexually motivated. 

By March 2021, the New Power Party (NPP) was pointing out that the government was taking far too long to take action. Of course, as we now know, that short lag between March and April meant that there was no law already in place when the woman in Pingtung was murdered by her stalker about two weeks ago. 

That was the price society paid. A life was lost. This isn't abstract, it's an immediate need. 

The approved draft amendment seems like it will go further than its dead-on-the-vine predecessors, as Premier Su has requested that it be implemented within six months rather than the originally-slated year, according to the Taipei Times. It includes immediate protection for victims, expanding the power of law enforcement to issue restraining orders on any harasser, not just those with family/couple relationships. It includes non-sexual stalking, such as spying, sending unwanted messages, images, goods or services -- meaning it should also cover cyberbullying and online stalking -- and raises the penalty for aggravated stalking with a weapon. Because it covers stalking behavior rather than who is stalking (e.g. a colleague, family member or person at school) or why they're stalking (e.g. for reasons related to sexual desire, gender or sexual orientation), it ought to cover marginalized groups such as transgender people who face stalking and harassment.

Most importantly, the passage of this new law is more likely because it finally "draws on relevant laws in other countries and on the views of women's rights groups and legislators in Taiwan", according to Focus Taiwan. 

Imagine that. The government finally listening to women's voices when drafting legislation that will help protect women. 

Imagine if they had done that in 2018. How many people might still be alive?

Review: The Lost Garden

As with the fictional garden in the title of this novel, it's hard to know where to begin with Li Ang's 1990 classic, not always clear which path you're on, nor where it will bring you, nor where or whether exactly it ends. If other writers use framing devices, spiraled time or narrative parallels in their work, Li Ang turns her story into a literal garden path. 

Li Ang 李昂, not to be confused with the famous film director, is the pen name of Taiwanese feminist writer Shih Shu-tuan 施淑端. Well-known in Taiwan, most notably for her 1983 novel The Butcher's Wife, very few of her works have been translated into English. She's known for her frank engagement with politics and criticism of the KMT, her feminist critiques of patriarchy in Taiwanese society, and her even more frank exploration of psychosexual themes and female desire. 

The two main stories -- the first of protagonist Chu Yinghong's childhood in the garden with her spendthrift father Chu Zuyan, worried mother and household staff, the second of Taiwan's booming real estate market and the seedy nightlife of the nouveau riche that boom created -- gracefully curve around toward each other, then away in a series of figure 8s, or infinity symbols, or two garden paths that intertwine in places but may or may not connect at the other end. 

Yinghong's childhood is partly the honey-hued memories of a child: the gossip of the staff, looking through carved windows shaped like vases, her father spending time in different parts of the garden, her mother's perfumed nightgowns. And it's partly the dark undercurrent of Taiwan's White Terror: her father had been sent to prison, only freed because it was thought he would die, and is still being watched. Smaller stories wend themselves away from this central path as well: how the garden came to be, the odd names of some of the pavilions, such as "Flowing Pillow", the flowers themselves, a teacher at school, a fire deliberately set, her father's purchases, something Yinghong once wrote in an essay which places her character as the inheritor of Taiwan's older and often crueler history. Some are dead ends, some meander back into the story. Some look as though they are going toward one pavilion but then turn abruptly toward another. 

On the other path, an adult Yinghong resolves to win the affections -- marriage, though perhaps not love exactly -- of real estate tycoon Lin Xigeng, despite his known carousing and previous marriages. Metaphorically, the story works: Lin is the 1970s "Taiwanese Dream", the new real estate boom, the Asian Tiger moneymaker. One reviewer described him as seeming like a 'white phoenix' rising from the ashes of the old Taiwan Yinghong knew, as well as Gatsby-like in his chasing of his gold-plated dreams. I'm not so sure about that, as Lin doesn't appear to have any sort of inner life; if he does, from Yinghong's viewpoint we get no sense of it. The main thing she seems to want from him is the funding to renovate her family's garden.

That, and sex. Li Ang explores the different ways their sex life manifests, and the feelings it engenders: trepidation, titillation, desire, dissatisfaction. There is perhaps a sense that she ends up trading her sexuality for an unsatisfying marriage to a fundamentally unappealing man in order to get what she wants for her family's legacy, which is tied up in a curse handed down from one of her ancestors. At the end, Yinghong realizes exactly what it is the curse has taken from her. 

Before that, though? Reader, there is quite a bit of blowjob. It is...how do I say this -- very much a lot. These pages explore Yinghong's inexplicable combination of desire and reticence or even perhaps revulsion, and they are exceedingly graphic. To this reader, that much time spent with an unappealing man's penis also felt like the literary equivalent of an unsolicited dick pick. I suspect, subtextually, this might have been intentional. 

Everything about Lin and his 'set' is portrayed as crass: superficially glittering (in one venue the ceiling is literally spray--painted gold) but ultimately cheap. Where she begins to see a marriage with him -- the old and the new together -- as a path forward for a modern Taiwan, she ends by realizing that she alone is the true inheritor of Taiwan's past, and he is means to an end. Look for this in one of the final scenes: he may carry on affairs and act like he's king of the island, but in that garden he is lost without her. 

That Chu Yinghong is portrayed as more sympathetic than Lin Xigeng (who feels more like a cardboard cutout than a man -- that is, a cardboard cutout with an exceedingly annoying penis that just keeps popping out whether you want it to or not) is the inevitable result of a narrative that contains semi-autobiographical elements. Li Ang, after all, was born to a wealthy Taiwanese family in Lukang which stood against the KMT. 

The garden path I most enjoyed meandering down was the political one. Rather than explain in dull detail how Li Ang uses botanical metaphors to achieve this, I'll share a passage: 

Ignoring objections from elders in the clan, Father went ahead with his plan. He disagreed with their practice of imitating Mainland garden architecture, including planting similar trees; the saplings they had taken so much trouble to find on the Mainland would not necessarily thrive in Taiwan. 

‘Why plant trees that won’t do well in the local climate? It’s better to grow indigenous trees and flowers,’ Father continued in Taiwanese. ‘Your children may be born in the year of the dog or the pig, but they’re still your own flesh and blood.’

Pines from the frigid zones baked in the harsh sun of central Taiwan for nearly half the year and lost the resilience of evergreens in the snow, where deciduous trees wither till the spring. They manage to put forth anemic needles on shapeless branches. The pines were dug up and replaced by star fruit trees. 

The star fruit trees came in mature forms, though many leafy branches were trimmed for the transplanting process. When spring arrived, tender, green, delicate leaves sprouted with impressive vitality. With the autumn wind came blankets of red flowers, so tiny they weren’t particularly attractive by themselves, but the concentration of many shades of red presented an eye-catching yet sorrowful beauty, especially when blown off to the ground by strong winds. The ground was covered with small flowers, like blood-red tears. 

With the arrival of winter, the tears disappeared, as if they’d shed their last drops of blood, and were replaced by small star fruit hanging on the trees like tiny green stars....but soon afterward, the starlike fruit began to fall, until not a single one was left. This time Medan explained that the newly transplanted trees needed time to recover from the uprooting and branch trimming before they could properly nourish the fruit.

Oof, right?

Comparisons are drawn to many of the historical gardens and homes across Taiwan. You can see in the description of the garden and the family that inhabits it -- as well as its placement in the distant suburbs of Taichung -- something of the Wufeng Lin family mansion. In the 'old Taiwan' aesthetic and silted-up port, you see Li Ang's hometown, Lukang. In the meandering garden paths and pavilions, perhaps a shade of the Banchiao Lin family garden. 

These implicit comparisons invite the reader to consider the ways such old families have shaped Taiwan, especially when Yinghong is asked why she chose a private management trust for the Chu garden rather than donating it to the government. Notably, the Lin Family Garden in Banchiao chose to work with the government (which is why the entry fee is so low). The Lin Family Mansion in Wufeng chose to continue private management. 

Chu Yinghong explicitly addresses this, asking why she'd give her family's garden to the government that oppressed her father. 

It's a good question, and teases out the ways that politics, money, cultural heritage and love (or lust) can shape individuals, families and a nation.

The reasons for Taiwan’s low birth rate remain simple

I was in Tainan over the weekend — I have no specific post about it because I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary, but I’ll share a few pictures. A lot of the temples there have those wooden plaques you can write a wish on, pray, and then hang your wish on a board or tree. If you actually stop to read other people’s wishes (and I do), you’ll notice that one of the most common is to “marry and have kids” or “have a little treasure as soon as possible”. Health, peace, love, family and career/financial success are also popular, for obvious reasons. 

But it struck me — for a country with a population that the news keeps saying doesn’t want to procreate, a lot of people sure do want to procreate. 

In fact, recent statistics show that Taiwan’s birthrate has continued to fall, remaining at or near the bottom of global fertility rankings. There’s some variation, with numbers being higher in Changhua, the outlying islands, Taoyuan and to a lesser extent, Hsinchu.

I wrote about this a very long time ago. The article probably sucks and I don't feel like going back to read it again, but I think it’s time to take another look. Mostly, I want to point out that people do want to have children. The question isn’t how to change people's attitudes; it’s how to make what most people already want possible. Shaming them simply won't work, as this Taipei Times article rightly points out.

Tricky Taipei has already published a good piece focusing on the availability of fertility treatments to unmarried people and same-sex couples, so I won’t cover that here. (I also hit this topic in 2016, so there's no need to repeat). The gist: anyone can freeze their eggs, but one must be legally married to a person of the opposite sex to pursue treatments like IVF. That’s not right and it really must change.

For those who aren’t seeking fertility treatments, however, the reasons why the fertility rate is low should be pretty obvious. Here's a brief recap:

1.) Salaries are too low

When you think about the cost of having children compared to Taiwan’s famously stagnant salaries, would you want to constantly worry that you can’t pay bills or raise them the way you want? 

2.) Housing costs are too high

It’s not unusual to want to own your own home before starting a family, or be close to that goal. Although it feels like new apartment complexes are going up constantly, they’re often half-empty, with many units acting as tax shelters or investment properties, not living spaces. Everyday people can’t afford enough space to raise a family comfortably close enough to work and school, so they delay having children. 

3.) Working hours are too long

In other words, when you’re grinding yourself to a pulp a hundred hours a week for some crappy boss, you just don’t have the energy to bone down.

In addition, if you're a double income household but don’t have family who can help, but both parents work, childcare is expensive. This is probably why so many parents pay for cram schools: most of the time, it feels like fancy daycare because that’s exactly what it is. 

4.) Straight-up sexism

Adding to this, a lot of Taiwanese women describe the country’s pretty strong maternity leave policies as “看得到但是吃不到” — we can see it, but we can’t eat it. In theory it's guaranteed, but we can’t access it. I work with a lot of career-minded professionals and over and over, the women tell me that they absolutely face passive-aggressive (or just plain aggressive) repercussions at work for taking their full allotted maternity leave, or are discriminated against in hiring because employers fear they’ll have children soon. 

And, of course, the gender wage and work gaps don't help. Taiwanese women still earn less than men and typically 'female' jobs tend to be lower-to-middle white collar. Women who feel satisfied with their pay and career trajectory are probably more likely to feel ready to have children. 

5.) People are marrying later

Single parenthood is fairly rare in Taiwan, although of course it happens. The government actively discourages it -- the abortion laws are intentionally eugenicist, not egalitarian.

With people mostly intending to have children after marriage, getting married later means fewer years to have children. That's a good thing. Personally, I don’t think my sense of self was fully settled until I was over 25, and I was closer to 30 before I felt mature enough to actually make a marriage work. There's even research backing this up, so it's probably true for a lot of people. In the past this could be papered over somewhat with traditional gender and family expectations, though I would bet just as many marriages were what we’d now call ‘failed’ in the past, even if divorce was not accessible.

6.) Lifestyles are changing

This isn’t a bad thing. It’s not wrong to want to live in a desirable area near work and school, with enough space, near but not with family, as Taiwanese youth are coming to realize the benefits of some privacy. It’s not wrong to want some of the trappings of a good life for your family — everything from travel to new clothes when you need them to not stressing about bills to sending your kids to good schools. Stagnant salaries mean fewer children, period.

7.) Gender roles are changing

Women have known for awhile that having more children means more work for them, if their husbands don’t step up. This is especially true if your support network can't step up to help. Some women have the desire and ability to be stay-at-home mothers, but even for families who can afford it, not every woman wants to give up her career, even if the hours are punishing. Can you blame them for not wanting to take on more in a society with this kind of work culture, where men still do far less housework than women?

This is also why people are marrying later: in the past perhaps one didn’t get as much of a say over what their married life would look like, because expectations were so set. Men earned money, and women could work (often running the most important parts of the family business) but had to do all of the traditional ‘women’s’ work, too. Even the Taiwanese feminist movement of the 1970s accepted this. Now, people want to marry a partner, not a role.

An interesting aside: the birth rate doesn't seem to be affected that much by educational attainment. There's a  drop-off in bearing children between female Master's and PhD holders, and a dip for women with Master's degrees in their twenties, but otherwise, the birth rate for women with Master's degrees in their 30s and 40s exceeds those with college degrees. This is likely because they delayed having those children, so the uptick in births appears in higher age categories.

This explains a lot

This is probably why Changhua and the outlying islands and, to a lesser extent, Taoyuan and Hsinchu, have higher fertility rates. I can't prove this, but in my experience the outlying islands are more conservative generally, so expectations of gender roles and family life may not have changed as much. Plus, young people who stay instead of moving to Taiwan likely live near family.

Changhua has some good things going for it, and the Taichung job market isn’t far away. And, again, if you’ve decided to raise a family in Changhua, it’s likely because you want to be near your own family support network. Hsinchu has comparably lower housing costs relative to higher science park salaries, and Taoyuan is commutable to both Hsinchu and Taipei, as well as being its own logistics hub due to the airport.

So what can we do?

Personally, I’m not sure constantly growing the population is the best way forward. Taiwan has limited space, and it’s already densely packed. Other solutions to deal with a super-aged society until population can level off would probably be better, but I don’t have any to offer beyond increased assistance to seniors. 

And of course, the statistics could be improved immediately if we just created a path for dual nationality for all immigrants, including the majority who are workers from Southeast Asia. 

But let’s say we do want more babies in Taiwan. How do we get people to have them?

Family subsidies are an acceptable start, but they are insufficient and don't seem to be working well. Measures to promote increased wages and lower work hours — yes, both of these, at the same time — would have a stronger impact, but it's hard to say what would achieve this and how enforceable it would be. Crappy bosses wouldn't like it because they would have to hire the number of people actually needed to get the work done and pay them fairly, but the goal would also be to reduce the number of bosses who can get away with being crappy. 

Affordable housing is something that can be addressed immediately. Instead of big infrastructure projects (I’m looking at you, F***ing Taipei Dome and every unnecessary new "Aerotropolis" and science park plan) while greenlighting housing  nobody can afford to live in, why not focus on affordable housing, renovate unoccupied urban structures and incentivize (not force) private construction companies to build human shelter, not tax shelter? At the same time, create or expand a mortgage or deposit subsidy for people with dependent children that can help them buy a first or larger home. 

Affordable childcare would help too. France has a subsidized “crèche” system; why can’t Taiwan? While we're at it, increase the availability of low-cost or free public pre-school, and create more engaging after-school programs for children that don't involve sitting at a desk for a few more hours memorizing facts to regurgitate on tests.

Finally, the government can and must listen to gender equality thought leaders. With progressive laws that don’t stigmatize or render inaccessible single or same-sex couple parenthood, enforcing gender equality laws and a strong “step it up, men (and bosses)” message, chances are we can make Taiwan a society where having more children is once again an appealing choice for women. 

Some of these changes would be complex and difficult, but others would be relatively straightforward. Some do require an outlay of political capital: reasonable work hours and pay will anger employers used to exploiting workers, and some of those companies skate by on razor-thin margins. Homeowners and development companies won't want to see the value of their properties decrease as housing becomes more affordable.

While I do understand the reasons behind such push-back, the changes that would actually solve the birth rate problem will also result in greater socioeconomic and gender equality. A robust middle class creates appealing conditions for people to grow their families. Funny how that works, eh? I'm not particularly sympathetic to those who resist because they thrive on inequality, keeping salaries low and housing prices high.

The government has a choice here: either take the necessary steps to actually address the low birth rate and face the inevitable resistance head-on, or don't -- but then don't whine that young people aren't having children because the financial and housing security they need is out of reach.

Most people do want children. There is no problem with young people’s attitudes and even if there were, they’re not going to change so all we can do is work with them. So we need to look at society for what it is and create targeted solutions that actually address the underlying issues that cause people to decide against having more children.