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〈特集論文〉

Uneasy Alliance:
State Feminism and the Conservative Government in Taiwan

Chang-Ling HUANG
State feminism usually begins to develop or has rapid development under
the rule of leftist or progressive governments. Like many other countries, Taiwanʼs state feminism is a product of the progressive, or at least relatively progressive government.
After the Democratic Progressive Party captured power in 2000, many
feminists were brought into the government mainly as commissioners of various government commissions and they actively promoted the agenda of genderequality. In 2008, however, the conservative Nationalist Party returned to power and the challenges to state feminism immediately emerged. Some of the
newly appointed civic commissioners to the cabinet or ministry-level gendercommissions had little background in or knowledge of the feminist movement.
This creates a challenge to the commission-driven gender policy machineries in
Taiwan.
By examining the reconﬁguration of the gender policy machineries and theinteractions between the feminist movement and the conservative government,
I argue that, under the conservative government, the alliance between the government and feminists, though not completely broken, has become much weakened.

Key words: state feminism, conservative government, gender mainstreaming, womenʼs movement

Ⅰ.

State Feminism and Conservative Government

In January 2014, the Ministry of Education in Taiwan announced the list of newly appointed
members of the Commission on Gender Equality Education. The announcement immediately angered
the feminist movement because two of the members had been involved in the campaigns against legalizing same sex marriages in prior months. The Commission on Gender Equality Education has
been a main engine in promoting gender equality since its establishment in 1997. Though among the
newly appointed commissioners there were also seasoned feminist activists, the appointment of thetwo controversial commissioners signaled that, under the conservative government, the alliance between the state and feminist movement, known as state feminism, had become really fragile or nearlybroken.

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Uneasy Alliance : State Feminism and the Conservative Government in Taiwan

State feminism has attracted the attention of feminist scholars since the 1980s when it emergedin many countries. Mazur and McBride (2007) delineated the development of the term in three stages.
At ﬁrst it was a loose term to describe a range of state activities related to gender and womenʼs issues. Later, inﬂuenced by the United Nationsʼ agenda of womenʼs decades and gender mainstreaming,
the term was associated with womenʼs policy agencies. The third stage illustrated intellectual endeavors by gender and womenʼs studies scholars and they gave the term an operationalized concept̶
state feminism is about the interactions between womenʼs policy agencies and feminist movements.
The impact of state feminism has been documented into two kinds: (1) policy and legal success insome policy realms, and (2) de-mobilization and de-radicalization of the feminist movement. It has
been shown that state feminism was successful in issues that have long been on the feminist movement agenda. Major policy changes or enactment of laws regarding abortion, prostitution, and equal
representation of men and women are usually achieved under state feminism. For policy issues thatare not generally recognized as gender and women-related, however, state feminism had clear limitations (Haussman and Sauer, 2007: 5) 1 . State feminism is also criticized for de-mobilizing and de-radicalizing the feminist. Once engaged in the bureaucratic routines of state functions, portions of movement
resources were directed to deal with the usually tedious bureaucratic requirement and less to advocate on gender equality (Haussman and Sauer, 2007: 5).
While the strength and limitations of state feminism were shared in many countriesʼ experience,
the literatures also tend to suggest that state feminism enjoys more success under progressive governments than conservative governments. Except for Bashevkin (1998, 1996, 1994), few studies focused speciﬁcally on the relation between conservative governments and feminist movements. Bashevkinʼs studies (1994) showed that under conservative governments, womenʼs interests could varywith diﬀerent opportunity structures, and they were not always disadvantaged. However, Bashevkin(1996) also showed that even if the feminist movement could still make advancement under conservative government, their common ground with the conservative government was much narrower. What
happened to state feminism under conservative government if it began under the progressive government in a newly democratizing country? Could state feminism survive the government change or did
it disappear when the conservative party returned to power? On the other hand, under what circumstances would the conservative government be willing to continue what was achieved during the ruleof the progressive government? This paper aims to explore these questions by looking at the experience of Taiwan, a young Asian democracy that has experienced state feminism under both progressive and conservative governments since 2000.
Taiwan experienced decades of authoritarian rule before democratization began in 1987. The
democratic forces eventually captured power in 2000, and feminists were brought into the government to take advantage of the opportunity to make and implement women-friendly policies. In 2008,
however, the conservative Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, KMT) returned to power, and the challenges to state feminism began. Based on data collected through documents, ﬁeld research, and personal
involvement and observation of Taiwanʼs feminist movement, I will show in this paper that the alli-

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ance between government agency and the feminist movement was weakened but survived after theconservative party returned to power. While state feminism withstood the attacks from the conservative social forces, a signiﬁcant crack did emerge after the Ministry of Education appointed membersof conservative social organizations to be the commissioners of gender equality education. The paper
concludes by arguing that, however uneasy the alliance between the state and feminist activists, thealliance is still important for the development of gender equality.

Ⅱ.

State Feminism under the Progressive Government 2

The creation of womenʼs policy agencies or gender policy machineries, in many countries, wastreated as the starting point of state feminism. In the 1970s, womenʼs movements in the western democracies regarded the state as patriarchal and unfriendly, so feminist activists usually worked outsideof the state. At that time movement actors focused on advocating gender equality in societies (Banaszak, Beckwith and Rucht 2003: 30). In the 1980s, the movement strategies began to shift and activists
not only wanted to engage the state more but also had more international mobilization (Rai 2003: 20;
Meyer and Prügl 1999). Many countries created womenʼs policy agencies in response to the womenʼsmovementʼs demands and the directives of international organizations such as the United Nations.
Being excluded from the United Nations, Taiwan was not engaged in the UN agenda of genderequality until the early 2000s. The establishment of womenʼs policy machinery in Taiwan had more to
do with the development of the domestic feminist movement than with the advancement of the UN
agenda. The ﬁrst womenʼs policy machinery was established in the capital city Taipei in 1995, after
the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won the mayor election and established the Taipei City
Commission on the Promotion of Womenʼs Rights (CPWR). This gender commission consisted of bureaucratic members and civic members. Bureaucratic members were heads of some of the departments of the city government. Civic members were representatives of womenʼs organizations or gender scholars. The chairperson of the gender commission was the mayor himself. Besides the CPWR,
the Commission on Gender Equality Education and Commission on Womenʼs Health were also established under the Department of Education and Department of Health in the Taipei City government,
following similar compositions of the gender commission and headed respectively by the heads ofeach department.
Though the Taipei City government under the DPP began to work with feminist activists throughthese various commissions, womenʼs policy machinery at the national level did not emerge until 1997
after a tragedy. The DDPʼs director of the Department of Womenʼs Aﬀairs was killed at the end of
1996. The killing was believed to be a random crime at night and not politically motivated. 3 However,
womenʼs organizations protested against the stateʼs inability to create a safe environment and demanded the national government, still under the rule of the conservative KMT, to be more responsive toward womenʼs needs. The national government eventually established similar commissions like theones in the Taipei City government. The cabinet CPWR was established and the Commission on Gen-

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der Equality Education was also established under the Ministry of Education. The cabinet CPWR met
three times a year, and at ﬁrst the commission was chaired by the Minister of the Interior, at thattime a female, and later the chairperson was replaced by the Vice Premier. Though civic commissioners would advise the government on various womenʼs policies, gender mainstreaming was not a partof the policy vocabularies yet. Though the commission did publish works related to gender equality,
its impact on government policies was not obvious under the KMT government.
In 2000, the Democratic Progressive Party won the Presidential Election and the alliance between
the government and feminist movement began to emerge and inﬂuence national policies. After the
DPP came to power, many feminist activists were appointed as the cabinet gender commissioners, andtheir involvement in the policy process led to institutional transformations and implementation of gender mainstreaming. Before these feminist activists became gender commissioners, the commission held
meetings three times a year and the policy suggestions made in those meetings were not necessarily
adopted or followed by line ministries. Among these commissioners, some were also seasoned feminist
activists. However, at that time the major function of the commission was consultative, and there wasno established mechanism to follow up on the suggestions made by the commissioners.
When the DPP was ﬁrst in power, the term of the KMT appointed gender commissioners had
not yet expired. Some feminist activists that were close to the DPP government made two demands.
First, that the commission should be expanded so more feminist activists could be commissioners.
Second, that the Premier, not Deputy Premier, should be the chairperson of the commission. The government accepted both. When more feminist activists were appointed as cabinet gender commissioners (commissioners for the cabinet CPWR), the feminist movement network was brought into the government. These feminists did not regard themselves as mere policy consultants; they thought ofthemselves as partners with the government in making gender policies. The cabinet gender commission was then divided into ﬁve diﬀerent sections with focuses on womenʼs safety, health, employment
and welfare, education and culture, and international participation. Besides the regular commission
meetings held once every four months, civic commissioners now had section meetings on those ﬁve
major policy realms and special meetings on speciﬁc policies. In other words, civic commissioners of
the cabinet gender commission not only met the Premier and other ministers once every four months,
they were constantly holding meetings with various ministers or senior bureaucrats to discuss all
kinds of policies. 4
Around 2002 and 2003, gender mainstreaming as a movement agenda was ﬁnally incorporated by
the cabinet gender commission and the alliance between the government and feminist movement was
further intensified because now the civic commissioners helped to review line ministriesʼ gendermainstreaming plans. Though many civic commissioners held full-time jobs in addition to the commission works, they were actively involved and very dedicated because of their activist background andmentality. The gender commission model was expanded into local governments in almost every cityand county after 2002, and by 2008, before the conservative party returned to power, a commission-like working team was also established in every ministry. 5 The expansion of the gender commis-

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sion was a signiﬁcant change, because it created even more institutional space that feminist activists
and gender scholars could take advantage of. In order to assure the connection between the ministry-level working teams and the cabinet gender commission, members of the cabinet gender commission passed a resolution and demanded that all the ministry-level working teams should have at least
one member of the cabinet gender commission on their teams. Such institutional design made Taiwanʼsgender policy machinery a commission-driven one since by 2008 there were gender commissions in every ministry and in almost every local government.
Along with the development of commission governance, under the progressive government, there
were also enactments of important gender laws. The Gender Equality Employment Law and the Gender Equity Education Law were passed respectively in 2002 and 2004. The Gender Equality Employment Law had been on the feminist movementʼs agenda for more than a decade and was ﬁnally passedby the parliament in 2002. The Gender Equity Education Law, on the other hand, was a signiﬁcant success of the alliance between the government and the feminist movement. 6 Civic members of the Commission on Gender Equality Education in the Ministry of Education began to draft the law in 2001 andwhen the bill was submitted to the parliament in 2004, activists and bureaucrats were on the sameside to lobby for the law. The law stipulated that a gender-friendly environment was essential for studentsʼ rights to education, so it required every school, from elementary schools to colleges and universities, to establish a Committee on Gender Equality to promote gender equality education and prevent
sexual assault and harassment on campuses. The law also clearly demanded teachers and administrators to respect studentsʼ sexual orientations. In the ensuing years the law opened the door for gay andlesbian organizations to go into many schools to educate students on gay and lesbian rights.
In addition to the legal success, the alliance between the government and feminist movement also
helped to increase womenʼs political participation. Due to the early adoption and later reforms of gender quotas, Taiwan already enjoyed one of the highest levels of female representation in elected oﬃces in Asia. The current percentage of female representatives in parliament is 33.6 percent, muchhigher than Japanʼs 9.5 percent and South Koreaʼs 15.7 percent. In 2004, the cabinet gender commission demanded that a 30 percent gender neutral quota be applied to every cabinet- and ministry-levelgovernment commission, not just gender commissions. This would allow each sex to occupy at least
30 percent of the seats in a commission. The demand became one of the resolutions of the cabinet
gender commission in 2005. 7 By the end of 2007, among the 500-plus government commissions thatwere supposed to comply with the resolution, more than 90 percent of them did. 8
Despite the success through commission governance, there were also obvious limitations. The
best example of the limitations was the cabinet gender commissionʼs inability to prevent the government from including a waiting period in the draft of the Reproduction and Health Bill. Around the
mid-2000s, the Department of Health wanted to replace the outdated Eugenics and Health Law, enacted in 1984, with a new Reproduction and Health Law. The religious organizations and feminist organizations fought against each other through the drafts of the bill regarding womenʼs reproductive freedom. The religious organizations demanded the government to implement a waiting period of seven11Chang-Ling HUANG

Uneasy Alliance : State Feminism and the Conservative Government in Taiwan

days for any woman who wanted to have an abortion and the feminist organizations wanted none ofthat. 9 Eventually in the bill submitted by the cabinet to the parliament in 2006, the waiting period
was reduced to three days and several cabinet gender commissioners resigned to protest.10 Unable to
win the battle within the cabinet, feminist activists turned to the parliament to block the bill. Becauseof the controversy about the waiting period, parliamentary members were reluctant to deliberate on
the bill and it has yet to be placed on the legislative agenda.
Generally speaking, state feminism in Taiwan had its share of success and limitations under the
progressive government between 2000 and 2008. One thing indisputable, however, is that the alliance
between the government and feminist movement was unprecedented. Before the feminist movement
had a chance to reﬂect on its gains and losses under the progressive government, the conservative
party returned to power and the new challenges began.

Ⅲ.

The Weakened Alliance under the Conservative Government

In 2008, the conservative party KMT returned to power in Taiwan. The government did notcompletely exclude feminist activists from the cabinet gender commission, but among the newly appointed cabinet gender commissioners were people who did not have much feminist background or
who were members of conservative womenʼs organizations. The alliance between the government
and the feminist movement, at ﬁrst however, was only weakened, not broken.
Because the term of the cabinet gender commissioners was not synchronized with the election
cycle, when the conservative government returned to power in 2008, the Premier could assemble the
new cabinet but he could not re-appoint the civic gender commissioners until their term expired,
which was one year away. In other words, institutionally, the Premier and his cabinet had to workwith the feminist activists left in the cabinet from the previous government. In 2009, when it wastime to appoint new cabinet gender commissioners, the government excluded those close to the opposition party but not all of the progressive feminist activists. There were notable changes of course.
For example, the National Womenʼs League of the Republic of China known for its close relation withthe conservative party, now had its deputy secretary appointed as a civic member of the cabinet gender commission. The Awakening Foundation, a feminist organization known for its long-term advocacy on gender equality policies and laws, no longer had its president appointed as a cabinet gendercommissioner, breaking a long-term tradition since the birth of the gender commission. There werealso civic organization members or scholars who became commissioners but had no particular background in womenʼs aﬀairs. The government, however, kept some of the commissioners who worked
with the progressive government before and that was enough to maintain a weak alliance with thefeminist movement. Table 1 shows the composition of the cabinet gender commissioners since theconservative government returned. As shown in the table, between 2007 and 2009, when the conservative government had to work with the civic commissioners left from the previous progressive government, the number of commissioners that had connections to the feminist movement or opposition12

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party was relatively high. After 2009, that number went down but remained stable throughout therule of the conservative government.
The conservative governmentʼs willingness to work with some of the feminist activists in thecabinet gender commission was partially related to the fact that Taiwanʼs gender policy machinery
did not have a full-time bureaucratic unit until 2012. Before all the government gender commissions
emerged from the mid-1990s, bureaucratic units such as the Departments of Womenʼs Aﬀairs in thenational or local governments treated womenʼs aﬀairs mainly as an issue of welfare delivery, not an
issue of gender equality. The situation changed when the various gender commissions were established but the governmentʼs commitment to promote gender equality still fell short of establishing ahigh-level bureaucratic unit to be in charge of planning and making gender policies. Starting from2003, the feminist movement demanded the government to establish a high-level bureaucratic unit for
womenʼs policies. Within the feminist movement, there were vehement debates about the proper institutional design. Some argued for a new ministry, like the Korean Ministry of Gender Equality. The
advantage of this ministry-model was transparency and an independent budget. Others argued for abureaucratic unit within the cabinet. The advantage of this department-in-cabinet-model was its bureaucratic power over line ministries. The debate lasted for a few years. Eventually in 2009 the government decided to adopt the department-in-cabinet model and that decision also allowed preservation of the cabinet gender commission. According to the new design, the cabinet gender commission
would be renamed as the Gender Equality Committee (GEC) of the Executive Yuan and remained as
the decision-making body for womenʼs and gender equality policies. The newly created Department ofGender Equality functioned as the secretariat to execute policies and decisions made by the GEC.
The governmentʼs decision to opt for the bureaucratic model instead of the ministerial model was
related to its intention to down-size the government, since the bureaucratic model would only havecreated a bureaucratic unit within the cabinet and the unit would not have an independent budget.
However, the governmentʼs decision also had an institutional impact that kept partisan politics distantfrom the gender policy machinery. Unlike the position of a minister, the head of the Department ofGender Equality within the cabinet would not be a political appointee. Instead, that position needed to
be ﬁlled by a civil servant. The head of the Department of Gender Equality therefore was basically asenior civil servant executing policies approved by the cabinet Gender Equality Committee, which inturn consisted of civic members that might or might not be politically close to the ruling party.
Such institutional design could also partially explain why some feminist activists were appointed
as civic members of the cabinet gender commission. Though the commissioners were appointed by
the Premier, it was the civil servants that prepared the list of potential commissioners for the Premier to select. Thus, as long as the activists were willing to work with bureaucrats in promoting gender equality, they had a chance to get invited back to serve in the commission, even if they, as individual voters, might not be supporters of the conservative party.
The irony was that if the conservative government really cared about gender policies and had its
own gender-related agenda, then the department-in-cabinet model could be as political as the ministe-13

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rial model, because, after all, the Premier himself was both the chairperson of the Gender Equality
Committee and the boss for the head of the Department of Gender Equality. He held the power to appoint the committee members as well as the head of the department. However, if the Premier did
want to politicize the gender policy machinery, then he needed to ﬁrst make sure that the head of the
Department of Gender Equality, supposedly a senior civil servant, was a good executioner of his gender-related political agenda. And then he needed to make sure that he appointed the right kind of
Gender Equality Committee members that would not oppose his agenda during the committee meetings. All these works probably meant he had to pay more attention to gender policies then he waswilling to. And this has been why the department-in-cabinet model seemed to have been less aﬀectedby partisan politics.
Another institutional reason that the alliance between the government and feminist movement
somehow remained was because of the gender equality working teams in the line ministries. When all
the ministries, under the demand of the cabinet gender commission, had to establish a gender equality
working team that included civic members, the ministries needed to ﬁnd scholars or activists that
had gender knowledge and understood the work of the ministries. When there were all these positions to ﬁll, it was no surprise that at least some feminist activists would be invited to be the civic
members of the gender equality working teams at the ministry level. In other words, the weak alliance between the conservative government and the feminist movement was not exactly a result of
the intent of the government, but a result of institutional demand.
Between 2008 and 2012, under the conservative government, because of the feminist activists inthe cabinet gender commissions and in the line ministriesʼ working teams, there were still advancements made by the feminist movement. Besides the creation of the Department of Gender Equality
within the cabinet, the government passed the Enforcement Act of CEDAW and a new Gender
Equality Policy Framework in 2011. Both had many feminist activists involved. Though Taiwan is not
a UN member, the Taiwanese parliament ratiﬁed the CEDAW in 2007 and the government, with thehelp of feminist activists, prepared the ﬁrst national report in 2009. Unable to send delegates to the
UN for the report to be reviewed, the Taiwanese government invited some CEDAW committee
members to Taiwan to help review the national report and the NGOʼs shadow reports. However, up
until 2009, there was no consistent enforcement of the convention and no systematic review of laws
and regulations to see if any of them violated CEDAW. Under the demand of the feminist movement
and with the support of the cabinet gender commission, the government submitted the bill of the Enforcement Act of CEDAW to the parliament and got it passed. The Gender Equality Policy Framework was initiated by civic members of the cabinet gender commission in view of the fact that theold framework, written and passed in 2005 under the progressive government, needed to be updated.
The commission invited other gender scholars to participate in drafting the framework, and, before
the framework was formally approved by the cabinet, it was presented to all ministries and to womenʼs organizations, conservative or progressive, in every city and county. The Framework was a comprehensive document and served as a “to do list” for the newly created Department of Gender Equali-

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ty.
When the Department of Gender Equality was ﬁnally established in the cabinet in 2012, the major tasks taken up by the department were three pillars: promoting gender mainstreaming, enforcing
CEDAW, and implementing the Gender Equality Policy Framework. All three tasks began under therule of the progressive government, and all three tasks had feminist activists involved and working
with the state, regardless of whether the government was progressive or conservative. The policy
continuity was there, but the alliance between the government and the feminist movement was diﬀerent. Under the progressive government, when a large number of activists were appointed as commissioners, the feminist movement network was brought into the government. Under the conservative
government, however, some of the feminist activists stayed on as commissioners, but the feminist
movement network was no longer in the government. The diﬀerence was mainly about the communications and interactions among civic commissioners before they attended the commission or working
team meetings. Under the progressive government, such kinds of communication usually allowed theactivists to have more strategic thinking in their interactions with the bureaucrats. For example, theywould try to solve their diﬀerences beforehand and avoid raising diﬀerent opinions when facing bureaucrats, so the bureaucrats could not use diﬀerences of opinion among civic commissioners as an
excuse for not taking actions. This “united front” was easier to form among the commissioners under
the progressive government since most of them shared feminist values. However, under the conservative government, such a united front became harder to form because the composition of the commissioners changed. When pre-meeting communications did not exist or became rare, the agenda that
could be pushed by the civic gender commissioners was aﬀected. Though there was no signiﬁcant regression of state feminism before 2013, the pace of the progression was slowed down. One example ofthe slowdown was gay and lesbian rights. In the Gender Equality Policy Framework, after rounds of
discussions, the government still refused to make a clear commitment to enact the Civil Union Law
or to legalize same sex marriages. The wording in the section regarding same sex marriages turned
out to be very vague, stating only that the government would make eﬀorts to create social understanding and consensus on this issue. The issue of same sex marriages, however, became the focal
point of the gender equality struggles in 2013.

Ⅳ.

State Feminism Challenged

In 2012, the conservative party KMT won re-election again in Taiwan, and, not long after that,the already weakened alliance between the state and feminist activists was challenged by the conservative social forces which rallied against gender equality education and same sex marriages.
The conservative forcesʼ challenge against gender equality education ﬁrst emerged in the springof 2011, and the target was gay and lesbian education. After the Gender Equity Education Act was
passed in 2004, the Commission on Gender Equality Education in the Ministry of Education soon decided to emphasize three tasks in schools: relationship education, sexual education, and gay and lesbi-

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an education. A new curriculum guideline for grade 1 to 9 was scheduled to be in eﬀect in August
2011,11 and the Commission on Gender Equality Education had made sure that gay and lesbian education would be included as part of the gender equality education in the guideline. The commission also
invited scholars to write a teachersʼ resource manual in which there were candid discussions on human sexuality, including homosexuality and transgender identities.
In the spring of 2011, a petition initiated by the Taiwan True Love Alliance, connected to Christian churches, demanded the Ministry of Education to stop teaching students about gays and lesbians
and called for the suspension of the new curriculum guideline. The petition misunderstood the teachersʼ resource manual as a new textbook for elementary and junior high school students and questioned the appropriateness of the content. Though feminist as well as gay and lesbian organizations
countered with news conferences and releases to clarify the misunderstanding and defended theteachersʼ resource manual, the True Love Alliance successfully lobbied the parliament to stop the
Ministry of Education from implementing the new curriculum guideline. The parliament also demanded the Ministry of Education to hold public hearings on this issue. Feminist and gay and lesbian organizations by then had also formed the Friendly Taiwan Alliance. In the following months, the two alliances fought against each other in all of the public hearings held by the Ministry of Education.
Meanwhile the civic commissioners of the Commission on Gender Equality Education were working
hard within the ministry to ﬁght for including gay and lesbian education in the curriculum guideline.
Eventually in the spring of 2012 the Ministry of Education presented a report to the parliament andthe curriculum guideline remained intact. The only revision made was on a competence indicator forjunior high school students. In the original guideline, one of the studentsʼ competence indicators would
encourage students to understand their own sexual orientations, and that indicator was changed toteach students to respect other peopleʼs sexual orientations. The change, therefore, was not a compromise on the curriculum guideline, only a compromise on the competence indicators for students. The
curriculum guideline that included gay and lesbian education withstood the attack from the True
Love Alliance partially, if not mainly, because of the work of the Commission on Gender Equality Education.12
Though gender equality education did not experience huge setbacks under the attack from theTrue Love Alliance, the conservative forcesʼ attempts to re-orient the direction of gender equality education continued and their mobilization for opposing same sex marriages exerted enough pressure
for the conservative government to eventually compromise the integrity of the Commission on Gender Equality Education. Since the mid-1980s, there had been sporadic eﬀorts in Taiwan to demand thelegalizing of same sex marriages. The momentum picked up in 2009, when the Taiwan Alliance toPromote Civil Partnership Rights (TAPCPR) was established. The alliance aimed at revising the Civil
Law to recognize civil partnership and legalizing same sex marriages. In October 2013, the TAPCPR
announced that, with the help of a female DPP parliamentary member, the organization was ready tosubmit the bill they had drafted. The announcement immediately led to the formation of the Alliancefor Protecting Families which opposed same sex marriages. The TAPCPRʼs bill consisted of three16

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parts: recognizing civil partnership, legalizing same sex marriages, and allowing “multi-member families” ̶ a family form that could be but not necessarily is polyamorous. The DPP politician only submitted the part on same sex marriages to the parliament for deliberation, but the Alliance for Protecting Families focused their attacks on the part of “multi-member families.” The same sex marriage
bill quickly passed the ﬁrst reading in the parliament, and the Alliance for Protecting Families, alongwith other non-religious conservative forces, mobilized a huge rally to prevent the bill from entering
the second reading. Between October and December 2013, the ﬁght between the pro and con campsof same sex marriages was very much like the replay of the ﬁght over the curriculum guideline ayear and half before. The only diﬀerence was that the ﬁght was even more vehement and had many
more people involved. Surveys conducted a year before showed that more than 50% of Taiwanesesupport same sex marriage, and younger generations overwhelmingly so. Therefore, besides the rallies each held on the streets, social media were also battlegrounds.
The conservative forcesʼ mobilization successfully blocked the bill from entering the second reading of the parliament after the Alliance for Protecting Families lobbied and exerted pressure on boththe KMT and the DPP parliamentary members. It turned out the party whips of both parties had sided with the Alliance for Protecting Families and the only parliamentary members that continued
their support for same sex marriages were a few female DPP politicians.13 In early 2014, accompaniedby the KMT parliamentary members, the Alliance for Protecting Families met with the Premier anddemanded that the Commission on Gender Equality Education should be “diversiﬁed” to include representatives from religious organizations and parental organizations, both close to the conservative
camp. Soon after, the Ministry of Education announced the list of commissioners for the 2014‒2016
Commission on Gender Equality. Though there were credible activists and scholars on the list, the appointment of people who had openly opposed same sex marriages shocked and angered feminist andgay rights organizations. Despite protests from these organizations, the Ministry of Education continued to cite “respecting diversity” as a reason for such appointments. Though there has been no obvious regression of the work of the Commission on Gender Equality Education yet, preliminary evidence shows that the function of the commission has been aﬀected by the two members close to the
Alliance for Protecting Families.14

Ⅴ.

Uneasy Alliance

Between 2008 and 2014, state feminism has survived under Taiwanʼs conservative government.
The government continued the work initiated during the rule of the progressive government by creating the Department of Gender Equality within the cabinet, releasing a new policy framework forgender equality, and enacting a law to enforce the CEDAW. The gender commissions in the cabinet
or line ministries also demonstrated their strength when their agendas were attacked by the conservative forces. However, state feminism under the conservative government also showed signiﬁcantcracks in one of the most important gender commissions̶the Commission on Gender Equality Edu-

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cation. It remains to be seen, however, whether there will be other cracks in the future and whether
the cracks will eventually break the alliance between feminist activists and the state.
Taiwanese feminists began to engage the state in an active way from the mid-1990s and the engagement was never easy. In many ways, it was a mutual learning experience ̶ feminists learned
the workings of the state and the state learned about feminist values. The engagement undoubtedly
brought challenges to the feminist movement. Besides the usual issues raised in the literatures ofstate feminism such as dual constituencies, re-direction of movement resources to accommodate thebureaucratic process of the state, or de-radicalization of the movement, the development of state feminism also made it more challenging for the feminist movement to connect with the youth. Engaging
the state requires knowledge of the state, and that knowledge could be tedious, boring, and sometimes even diﬃcult for young people to get a hold of because usually it is about understanding how
the bureaucratic process works.15
The continuity of state feminism was also a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it showed thatstate feminism in Taiwan was not aﬀected very much by partisan politics because it allowed the feminist movement to keep its inﬂuence in the policy making process to some extent. On the other hand,
however, it also meant that the feminist movementʼs agenda was not able to drive any political partyʼsmajor agenda. This was particularly clear on the issue of same sex marriages. When both the KMTand DDP were under pressure from the lobby of the conservative forces, neither party showed thecommitment to legalize same sex marriages.
Generally speaking, Taiwanʼs experience has shown that state feminism under the conservative
government might slow down the pace of gender equality development, but it has not reversed thecourse of actions taken under the progressive government ̶ at least not yet. This means that once
feminist activists ﬁnd a way to engage the state, as long as they keep engaging, the state would become more gender friendly. The alliance might be uneasy between the feminists and the state, especially under the conservative government, but it is important and even necessary for the developmentof gender equality.
（ほぁん・ちゃんりん／國立臺灣大學准教授）
掲載決定日：2014年（平成26年）12月19日

Table 1. Cabinet CPWR Member Composition
Term Year

Total # of the
Cabinet CPWR
Members# of Civic
Members

2007-20092009-20112011-20132013-2015

30
31
31
35

17
18
18
18

# of Members who
have movement or
progressive party
connections
12
8
6
7

: Compiled by the author with data from the Department of Gender Equality of Executive Yuan, Republic of China

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ジェンダー研究

第18号

2015

References
Allsopp, Jennifer. “State Feminism: Co-opting Womenʼs Voices.” (2012, https://www.opendemocracy.net/author/jenniferallsopp-0).
Banaszak, Lee Ann, Karen Beckwith, and Dieter Rucht.

. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Bashevkin, Sylvia. “Confronting Neo-Conservatism: Anglo-American Womenʼs Movements under Thatcher, Regan and
Mulroney.”. 15. 3 (1994): pp. 275‒296.

――――. “Losing Common Ground: Feminists, Conservatives and Public Policy in Canada during the Mulroney Years.”. 29. 2 (1996): pp. 211‒242.
――――.

. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

Hankivsky, Olena. “Gender Mainstreaming in Canada and Australia: A Comparative Analysis.”. 27. 1 (2008):

pp. 69-81.
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. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littleﬁeld, 2007.
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2008.
Jacobs, Andrew. “For Asiaʼs Gays, Taiwan Stands Out as Beacon.”. Oct. 29. 2014.

Lovenduski, Joni, Petra Meier, Diane Sainsbury, Marila Guadagnini, and Claudie Baudino.
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Mazur, Amy G. and Dorothy E. McBride. “State Feminism since the 1980s: From Loose Notion to Operationalized Concept.”. 3. 4 (2007): pp. 501‒513.
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. Lanham, MD.: Rowman and Littleﬁeld, 1999.

Outshoorn, Joyce.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Peng, Yenwen. “When Bureaucrats Meet Feminists: Exploring the Progress and Challenges of Gender Mainstreaming in
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Rai, Shirin.

.

Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003.
Siim, Birte and Hege Skjeie. “Tracks, Intersections and Dead Ends: Multicultural Challenges to State Feminism in Denmark and
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1

The studies that Haussman and Sauer (2007) mentioned include Stetson (2001), Outshoorn (2004), and Lovenduski et al.
(2005).

2

I am sure there will be disagreement from scholars or social activists in Taiwan when I use the term “progressive
government” to describe the government under President Chen Shui-Bian of the Democratic Progressive Party. However,since progressiveness can be a relative concept in terms of the political spectrum, I stick to that term in this paper for

19Chang-Ling HUANG

Uneasy Alliance : State Feminism and the Conservative Government in Taiwan

analytical purposes.
3

The case was not solved and the killer is still at large.

4

The bureaucrats, of course, did not like these changes and had their share of doubts and reservations on gendermainstreaming. See Peng (2008).

5

For a description of this process, see Huang (2008).

6

For a comparison of the state-society relation of the enactment process of the Domestic Violence Prevention Act, enacted
under the conservative government in 1998, and that of these two gender laws, see Yang (2006).

7

See the 22nd Meeting Minutes for the Executive Yuan Commission on the Promotion of Womenʼs Rights: http://www.gec.
ey.gov.tw/Upload/RelFile/1508/719858/2dd73a76-5610-4485-81ba-ef68f0f1a68.pdf
Executive Yuan is the name for Taiwanʼs cabinet.
This percentage is calculated from the meeting documents for the 27th Meeting of the Executive Yuan Commission on the8

Promotion of Womenʼs Rights. The meeting documents were data and documents prepared by bureaucrats for thecommissionʼs meetings. Unlike the meeting minutes, these documents have not been released online.
9

Technically speaking, Taiwanese women had reproductive freedom in the old Eugenics Law because one of the conditions
under which legal abortion was allowed was very vaguely worded.

10

I was among those who resigned.

11

In Taiwan, all the textbooks used by the schools, from elementary to high schools, have to follow the curriculum guideline
designed by the Ministry of Education.

12

Unable to change the curriculum guideline, the True Love Alliance came up with a new tactic. In 2013, the alliancechanged its name to Taiwan Gender Education Development Association. The name, in both Chinese and English, wasextremely close to the Taiwan Gender Equality Education Association, an organization established 10 years earlier and wellknown for its efforts in advocating for gender equality education. Once the True Love Alliance changed its name, theorganization began to advocate a conservative version of gender education of which one of the main ideas was that gays andlesbians were corrigible.
13

Though the bill on legalizing same sex marriage got blocked, Taiwan was still regarded as the beacon for gay and lesbianrights in Asia (Jacobs 2014).

14

I was told that civic commissioners spent a lot of time ﬁghting and arguing within the commission mainly because there isalways diﬀerence of opinions between the two conservative members and the rest of the commission.

15

For example, it takes some experience for civic commissioners to understand how to push the right button when they

demand bureaucrats to take actions. Bureaucrats usually would not take initiatives to accomplish the tasks that civic
commissioners demand unless the tasks are speciﬁcally assigned to them. To make sure the tasks are correctly assigned,
civic commissioners need to have some knowledge about the functions of diﬀerent units within the cabinet or the ministry.

20