Audrey Tang: Hello.

Mami Takesada: [laughs] Why isn’t that on?

Mami Takesada: I’m from Code for Japan. But I also come from the company, LITALICO which provide the services for the children who have disabilities. and I am the student of the university, to make some programs to help the children who cannot sleep because of the disabilities.

Audrey Tang: I see.

Mami Takesada: That’s why I want to talk about the education, mainly.

Audrey Tang: OK, so like assistive technologies?

Mami Takesada: Right.  I have so many topics that I want to talk about. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: No problem. Go ahead.

Mami Takesada: The first thing is about the…

Audrey Tang: Science and technology.

Mami Takesada: Yeah, about the education for every children, because…How can I say it? Our company is…

Audrey Tang: I know. They’re a very famous company around here.

Mami Takesada: Oh, really.

Audrey Tang: Yes.

Mami Takesada: LITALICO provide the services for the children with autism,ADHD,LD from 2011. They have some difficulties when they want to communicate with others and when they attend classes in school. We also have the program for children to learn programming, and it start from 2014. I also was the teacher for the special needs and some of the autism children who are not good at talking with others by using the language in Japanese or English, but they’re very good at programming, because the programming language have the…How can I say it? [non-English speech]

Ky: [non-English speech] .

Audrey Tang: The natural language is not as precise as programming languages.

Mami Takesada: Right. That’s why some of the autism is very good at programming, better than using the natural language. And so, we made the programming schools.

Audrey Tang: The Japanese language is actually the most special…

Audrey Tang: …of natural languages, so it makes it extra difficult. I think maybe German is easier.

Mami Takesada: That is why we made the programming schools in 2014. From 2020, the Japanese government start to make the programming classes in elementary school. I think government shows some goals but teachers don’t have clear visions yet. Just we try to use the programming. That’s why we have to make the clear visions to realize the STEAM education actually.

Audrey Tang: Including art?

Mami Takesada: Including art, yes. [laughs] What is going on in Taiwan, and what is the thing that your team aims for…?

Audrey Tang: In Taiwan, we talked about core competency. That is the foundation of our education curriculum, starting this year.

Audrey Tang: Starting this year, we make the 1st, the 7th, and the 10th grade switch from what’s originally called competitiveness, which has something about standardized answers or about competition between students, into competencies, which is no competition between individuals, rather talks about the three dimensions of empowerment as a life-long learner. Of course, you can read kanji…

Mami Takesada: [laughs] Yes.

Audrey Tang: Some of them is similar because they are literally taken from Japanese translations. [laughs] Autonomy, interaction, and common good or social participation, are the three competencies for life-long education. When we talk about technology, the competency is literally called technology, information, and media literacy.

Mami Takesada: It’s including the media literacy.

Audrey Tang: It’s the same thing, and it’s with a angle of communication and interaction with people who are different from you. This is very important because if we communicate only with people who are more like us, it becomes a echo chamber where it reinforces the stereotype about everybody else, and people become more exclusive.

Audrey Tang: If you think technology is part of media literacy, and it’s aimed at communicating and interacting with people who are not like you, then it’s inclusive by design. That is the basic philosophy of our new curriculum, which is not only very different from the previous curriculum, 10 years ago. It’s also different from most other East Asian curriculums.

Audrey Tang: It is done more like Finland or more like Scandinavian countries, so it is a large change for the Taiwan society. That’s why we start only in the 1st, 7th, and 10th grade, and every year we will introduce it to one more grade until six year in the future, where the entire basic education will have the same design.

Audrey Tang: Part of it says the Ministry of Education don’t control which school material and education to use, as long as you can fulfill those nine competencies. The school can design their own classes, their own participation along with the community.

Audrey Tang: What used to be a off-hour activity or a summer camp or winter camp can now be included in the schools as its own designed classes. In that we encourage a new generation of what we call education innovators to design new curriculums and material based on those competence without any restriction by the Ministry of Education.

Audrey Tang: There’s already classes on thinking, creative thinking, design thinking. There’s already classes based on e-sports and teach people how to become a good YouTuber.

Audrey Tang: Which is also communication and interaction, because when we talk on media literacy, we mostly talk about as a consumer of media. If we are now talking about media competency, that’s the competence of you as a media, and that’s a very different creator-oriented view. That’s very broad-brushes, but that’s the basic idea.

Mami Takesada: Mainly the teachers have to make the…

Audrey Tang: …facilitating environment, and they become co-learner with the child, whereas before, in Taiwan, teacher are more authoritarian, in a sense that they still hold the correct answer.

Audrey Tang: Now, what we are trying to say is that there’s no correct answer anymore. The teacher is just someone who have learned about this before, but the teacher may not have one hundred percent the correct answer. The students are encouraged to make their own test, hypothesis, experiment, and so on, and to also improve on their teachers’ knowledge.

Mami Takesada: It’s very difficult for the teachers to…

Audrey Tang: …adapt.

Mami Takesada: Yes. Various changes are required.

Audrey Tang: That’s why we waited until this year to roll this out, because, indeed, for teachers and parents who are educated before the lifting of the martial law, this is a very strange concept.

Audrey Tang: But for people who are at the first grade, that’s to say seven-years-old, their parents are already raised after the lifting of the martial law, when Taiwan becomes a liberal democracy, so they are more in line with this kind of thinking. If we rolled this out earlier, that would have been very difficult.

Mami Takesada: So this is the time?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, this is the time.

Mami Takesada: How to prepare …

Audrey Tang: …the teachers?

Mami Takesada: Yeah, teachers.

Audrey Tang: And the parents?

Mami Takesada: Yeah, yeah. I mean that even if they know about this…

Audrey Tang: The basic idea.

Mami Takesada: Yeah. It’s difficult for them to do… [laughs]

Audrey Tang: Yes, indeed. There’s many ways. For example, there’s a lot of manga hour or short video or [laughs] comic book and things like that that tries to explain how the old and the new curriculums differ.

Audrey Tang: The Ministry of Education’s Facebook page here…

Mami Takesada: So the Minister make this…

Audrey Tang: Yeah, the Ministry makes this to explain, because we can no longer predict the future 12 years in the future, so we must help our student become lifelong learners instead of conforming to the standardized, and so they will become obsolete 12 years into the future. That’s the basic explanation. We also understand not everybody have the time to watch the seven-minute video.

Audrey Tang: That is why they now use manga to more easily…They now have a podcast called “Moe Moe.”

Audrey Tang: It’s the Ministry of Education, or MOE. That’s Moe. Very cute, right?

Audrey Tang: They have, now, the podcast and comic book ideas that share their going ons. They also, now, have comic books, like how the Ministry of Education, after drinking a chemical, becomes a high-school student of the 10th grade. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: He must now have a taste [laughs] of the curriculum that he helped design.

Audrey Tang: This is actually really popular [laughs] and get a lot of what we call remixes from the creators community. You can easily see something like this.

Audrey Tang: This is a very Japanese way of visual storytelling. The minister of education agreed to become [laughs] a beautiful teenager.

Mami Takesada: It’s easier to imagine.

Audrey Tang: [laughs] They really try all the different channels, including turning the minister into a bishounen…

Audrey Tang: To make sure that it appeals to all the parents of all the ages as well as the teachers of all ages. It’s actually really high quality, so you can take a look at our minister as a Bishōnen.

Mami Takesada: By using the manga, video, and podcast, the image comes to teachers. After that, they have to shift to the execution stage. For example, the project-based learning or…

Audrey Tang: That’s right, two things. First is that everybody currently in second grade to sixth, they are still using the old curriculum, but they witness how the first grade is making the education happen.

Audrey Tang: It’s like a fishbowl where they can participate and prepare for themselves. The second grade teachers, next year it’s them.

Mami Takesada: [laughs]

Audrey Tang: The same children become their children [laughs] to teach, so they must participate. Also, each school has a curriculum-development committee.

Audrey Tang: In there, they must also educate upward, like educate the directors and so on, in the school of how to make what people around the school is interested into their curriculum and extends their classes to involve more community action.

Audrey Tang: For example, there is a startup right here called Skills 4U. They work very intensively with those schools that want to develop their new curriculums.

Audrey Tang: What they do is that they discover what the school needs in terms of community building, and they work with the champions of world skills, that is to say, the craftspeople that are world-class in Taiwan. They are invited to the National Day Parade like national heroes. They’re very visible.

Audrey Tang: They pair these national champions of skills, these people, like people who make gardens, garden-makers, people who repair machinery, people who make sure that fiber-optics and cables are laid out correctly, painting, spraying of cars, and so on. All these people, they introduce them into the schools.

Audrey Tang: They become role models for the students and also work with the students and their parents to remodel their school, to make the school more creative, to include more room for community participation. All this is built upon the fact that the new curriculum is what we call soft curriculum that allows this kind of co-creation to happen on a school level and not just on the municipal policy level.

Ky: I can send you the link, the news Skills 4U thing.

Audrey Tang: Their team, the World Skills Taiwan team won the third place, worldwide, in this year’s World Skills competition. For the school children, many of them used to think that working as a skills person is something you do if you cannot place highly on examinations and study for academia.

Audrey Tang: Now, what the Skills 4U is doing is making sure that people who are interested in skills can have a early taste of how it works like. Maybe at 7th or 10th grade, they already become respected masters of their skill.

Mami Takesada: By meeting someone who already has the skills they want to get…

Audrey Tang: And co-creation, and establishing the mentors and role models. That’s something even the parents and teachers can look up to.

Mami Takesada: Mainly, the children only can communicate with parents and teachers. There are lots of other adults, and it can be helpful to imagine.

Audrey Tang: Very much so, including the manga illustrators.

Mami Takesada: [laughs]

Audrey Tang: The Ministry of Education starts with something that the parents understand, like they want to explain about the preschool kindergarten using a famous Japanese manga…

Audrey Tang: …commly translated here as “the girl with a thousand faces”, [laughs] to explain. Of course, then it starts to build their own like moe moe branding.

Audrey Tang: They choose something that the parents can relate with. They, as young people, have already a lot of experience with…

Mami Takesada: Manga.

Audrey Tang: …those Japanese manga characters.

Audrey Tang: “Garasu no Kamen” (a glass mask), right? [laughs]

Mami Takesada: It’s not stuff from the ministry? It’s stuff from the community.

Audrey Tang: No, it’s directly from the parents and the teachers. The ministries play a supportive role by making sure that they have the resource required. We no longer say how exactly are you going to teach your classes.

Mami Takesada: Are there any people who can supervise them from the ministry?

Audrey Tang: There’s two main sources. One is from the maker and CSR of the technology companies’ community, like ASUS or Acer.

Audrey Tang: There’s many Taiwan science and technology companies, the Taiwan Semiconductor, that care a lot about education especially in more remote places. It turns out they have a lot of equipment [laughs] and a lot of expertise, and so their CSR is very important in ensuring that we have an inclusive and equitable not only equipment but also training.

Audrey Tang: They have a recycling program where if you have broken computer, they can reassemble them back together and give them to children who are less advantaged economically, and not only in Taiwan. They’re now operating in, I think, 60 or so countries worldwide, the Asus Foundation alone, and many other large companies are rolling this out.

Audrey Tang: They don’t wait for the minister of education, they just go ahead…

Audrey Tang: …and do it, and they are a very solid foundation of the social entrepreneurship ecosystem, because as a social entrepreneur, the main thing is that we don’t have at the beginning a lot of capital investment for those basic facilities.

Audrey Tang: If you want to try a lot of different ideas, those commodity hardware is what you need. That’s how those larger companies can provide for free for the social innovators to work with. That’s the foundation.

Audrey Tang: The second one is called University Social Responsibility or USR. USR is basically saying as a undergrad student, as part of your capstone project, you can do something for two years or so, something good for your community, and that counts, for example, as a graduate degree, or that counts toward your undergrad degree.

Audrey Tang: That allows the undergrad people to learn from the community, and when they go to graduate level, it’s more likely they will learn something that’s useful for the community and not just for themselves, for their own career. This is a very large component in the USR system, as each school can design anything that correspond to the 17 sustainable goals.

Audrey Tang: This year they have to identify which target of the 169 they’re working on and then encouraging their undergrad people to make contributions. As graduate students they maybe become think tank for the regional revitalization. Again, that’s something we learned from Japan, both the one that worked and the one that didn’t work.

Audrey Tang: The USR system and CSR system are the two pillars in addition to the Ministry of Education’s work.

Mami Takesada: You think this system for the STEAM education will maybe going better in these six years?

Audrey Tang: Yes, yes. That’s what we mean by what we call the sustainable social impact technology. It’s not asking people to adapt to technology. It’s bringing technology to the society, and in that we’re very much philosophically, the same as society [non-English speech] it’s the same idea.

Audrey Tang: It’s maybe implemented differently, but it’s the same idea.

Mami Takesada: I also have some interest about inclusive education, because in Japan, the number of the children goes down, but the percentage of the children who have disabilities goes up, so …how can I say … [non-English-speech] .

Ky: [non-English speech]

Audrey Tang: Regardless of the birthrate, which is declining, the children born with congenital, born disabilities has…

Audrey Tang: Congenital.

Audrey Tang: People who are born with disabilities?

Mami Takesada: Not really.

Audrey Tang: Or just the total people with disabilities?

Mami Takesada: No.

Ky: That it’s being detected as…

Mami Takesada: I mean that many get autism and ADHD, the number of the ADHD and autism increase it’s because from the brains.

Audrey Tang: Some of it is genetic, but some of it is also social.

Mami Takesada: The main reason why it’s increase is that so many people understand what is the autism and what it’s the ADHD. That’s why parents easily think that we will have a medical examination and …

Audrey Tang: It’s recognized more.

Mami Takesada: Yeah. More than before.

Audrey Tang: I see. So it’s not that more people are born in total, right?

Mami Takesada: Maybe not.

Audrey Tang: No, that would go into conspiracy theory territory. [laughs]

Mami Takesada: Because people can understand what is going on. Before that, 10 years ago, it’s very difficult for the parents to understand their children had disabilities, but now more easily to get understand to that.

Audrey Tang: The social awareness is higher. I see that.

Mami Takesada: The bias is little bit lower than before so that…

Audrey Tang: So we see them more.

Mami Takesada: Yes, so that’s why.

Audrey Tang: It’s exactly like that in Taiwan. When I was a child, a teenager, you don’t see a lot of people in a wheelchair on the street or people with blindness with a cane on the street.

Audrey Tang: It’s not because people are healthy. [laughs] It’s because the environment is unfriendly, [laughs] so they don’t go to public spaces, but now you see them all the time. At least in Taipei City, the universal design is now taken at the human right issue.

Mami Takesada: In that case we have to make some more care in the education, in the elementary school, we have to take care more than before. That’s why we have to hire more teachers, but because the number of the children decreased, the government don’t want to use money for education.

Audrey Tang: What is your vision? There’s two different visions. One is called full inclusion, which is we use assistive technologies and personnel to make sure that people with neuropath diversity can still learn with every other children and with different cognitive capabilities.

Audrey Tang: The other is special education, which is making sure that people with similar conditions are learning very effectively together. I don’t know which direction are you working with.

Mami Takesada: Our company?

Audrey Tang: Yeah.

Mami Takesada: Our company working for the inclusive…

Audrey Tang: Full inclusion. That’s awesome.

Audrey Tang: It’s more difficult though.

Mami Takesada: Our centers are focus on the children with autism, so we have the special classes for such children. We train them to join the classroom, so I mean there’s special care for inclusive way.

Mami Takesada: Their goal is full inclusion. The ways to inclusive we do the one-on-one style communication training or some learning training.

Audrey Tang: I see that. I remember there’s a Social Enterprise Insight, SE Insights. It’s, I think, the largest media here that focus on social entrepreneurship. I was at their annual conference, and they used LITALICO as the single example of what inclusion means. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: I remember that very well. [laughs] There’s a lot of social entrepreneurs in Taiwan, because Sunny Lin, one of the cofounder of SE Insights, really likes your idea about how people supporting each other and 利他利己, as in benefiting the others…

Audrey Tang: That’s why I said that you’re popular in Taiwan at least among social entrepreneurs. [laughs] It’s because you have a good advocate, but I understand your vision.

Mami Takesada: It works in the Tokyo now, but it’s not in the local area, because we don’t have it across in the other places in the local cities. That’s why we try to get the communication with the schools and centers to…

Audrey Tang: …to help them to transform their own places.

Mami Takesada: Yes. And I want to ask you about Taiwan. What is going on in Taiwan, and what is happen about inclusive education in the future you imagine. When you want to make inclusive education, what is the things that you plan to do in…

Audrey Tang: This place is co-designed. You can still see a lot of visual design by people with Down syndrome.

Mami Takesada: You said that in g0v summit 2018.

Audrey Tang: I think, as with people with Down syndrome, a lot of work is public rebranding of what it means to be among people with Down syndrome. If we say that they are like sick people, like [non-English speech] , which is literally a disease, then it limits our interaction with them.

Audrey Tang: It constraints what people have in imagination about interaction with them. If we say something like they’re – how do we translate that – joyful and trusting children, something like that, [laughs] like 喜憨兒, or just 憨兒.

Audrey Tang: They’re cheerful children and trusting children, maybe, so joyful and…

Automated Voice: Silly, simple-minded, naive.

Audrey Tang: Naive.

Audrey Tang: That’s joyful and naive children, then that’s a rebranding. For 20 years, the CAREUS foundation systemically replaced every place where people say…These are the people that had a new logo that had a new translation, a new branding, and systemically re-introduced the Down syndrome.

Mami Takesada: To reject the unconscious bias?

Audrey Tang: To reject the disease metaphor and instead saying that they’re more joyful and creative than us. They are more optimistic, they are better creators and artists, which is true, and then they can be included more as fellow-creators of this space and so on.

Audrey Tang: The same with people with autism. There is a lot of rebranding to build in not as people with disabilities, but people who are part of a star family, or a family with 星星兒. I think that’s one of the new brandings like people from a different planet. That’s the main idea.

Audrey Tang: There’s many new brandings around that as well [laughs] in the past two decades. The idea, again, is to basically say also people in different planets have different cultures. That planet may have atmospheric condition that says you need a more respect distance between people.

Audrey Tang: If they are upset, you can leave them alone without…You can let them see that you’re beside them, but not interfere with them. They don’t need comfort like Earth people do and things like that. You can have a lot of creativity just based on this rebranding.

Audrey Tang: That rebranding then creates the more correct idea about neurodiversity, and from that, a fully inclusive education. I think in Taiwan, a full inclusive education, we’re at this stage, moving here.

Mami Takesada: From here?

Audrey Tang: Yeah. We’re not at full inclusion yet. A lot of the new curriculum is doing is opening up resources for people focusing on your work, which is from segregation to integration. We’re still here. We’re not working on this yet. I would say we’re not that better than Tokyo.

Audrey Tang: We are definitely moving to this direction.

Mami Takesada: The next one is, even when we make the inclusive education, some of them don’t want to go to the school even if it’s inclusive.

Audrey Tang: I know. That’s why we also use the American idea of individualized education program. It’s required by law to have IEP.

Mami Takesada: Now the children can choose homeschooling?

Audrey Tang: Yes. Up to 10 percent of everybody in Taiwan in basic education can ignore the curricula altogether and become a student in the experimental education system. They can work in an individual education program. They can work with the education group. They can work with alternative institutions. The Waldorfschule is very popular in Taiwan.

Audrey Tang: Whichever, they enjoy the same rights as children at their age. They can also use the resources offered by public schools. This is important because there’s a zigzag. If they build confidence, someday they want to be included. If sometimes they get specific activity that they really want to focus on software quality assurance, then they may enter the experimental education system.

Audrey Tang: This is very important to allow without any delay. Every semester, they can choose how much to be included and how much individualized. The enabling act in Taiwan is leading in Asia, in that they can enjoy exactly the same rights and purposes, as well as having experimental education system, all the way to senior high school.

Audrey Tang: The law actually authorizes experimental university as well. It’s new, so nobody really have done it yet.

Audrey Tang: Someday we will see it. [laughs]

Mami Takesada: Thank you. One more thing that I want us to talk about the sex education, because…Hold on a second. Now our company tries to do the training in the [non-English speech] .

Ky: [non-English speech]

Audrey Tang: Delinquency?

Mami Takesada: The children who do the…

Audrey Tang: Delinquency.

Mami Takesada: When we do the training in that context, we realized that some of the children with autism or ADHD included in that area, and the girl also included in the area because of the environmental factoers…how can I say. In Japan and most Asian country, maybe women is weaker than men. There are no much choice. quite limited than men.

Mami Takesada: And the children who have the program with the parents or the families go out to the city. In the case of the young girl just go around in the night, out at night, some adults get them to join the sexual industry, the maid cafe where the girls wear maid uniforms to serve customers  who perform as a master or something like that. It’s a little bit easier one, but heavier accident happened in Tokyo or some cities.

Mami Takesada: To help any kinds of children, they have to learn the equal rights when they are young. It’s about disable, it’s about sexual things, it’s about culture, or the [non-English speech] , everything.

Audrey Tang: Of course. That’s like human right education.

Mami Takesada: When we talk about sex education, Japanese people don’t want to talk about sexual things. They refuse. They cannot separate the sexual things and the sex. [laughs] That’s why we have some difficulties to do the sex education.

Audrey Tang: Certainly, you have the idea of gender education. It’s in the Japanese culture. Gender and sexuality, it’s the not the same word, is it?

Mami Takesada: It’s not the same word, but the adults, including mainly the teachers and parents, don’t want to talk about sex. They don’t have the correct idea to talk to children, because it’s…

Ky: Because it makes more easier for these girls to go on…

Audrey Tang: In Taiwan, and I’m pretty sure it’s the same concept as we’re used, when we talk about gender equality, we talk about literally the words are sex difference equal treatment, or 性別.

Ky: [non-English speech]

Audrey Tang: I don’t think it’s a different concept. We probably learned our translation from Japan. [laughs] No?

Mami Takesada: [non-English speech]

Audrey Tang: It’s not about the act of sex. It’s about the equal treatment despite the differences, or 平等. It’s a very simple idea in Taiwan, so much so that we made it into a lot of laws, like the Gender Equality Act, the Gender Equality Education Act, the CEDAW. I don’t know how to translate that in Japanese.

Audrey Tang: It’s an international treaty to make sure that there’s no discrimination.

Ky: [non-English speech]

Audrey Tang: It’s elimination of all forms of discrimination, CEDAW. All of this has been going around for 12 years now in the Taiwan public service, so much so that for each new bill or each new budget item, everybody have to file a very verbose paper of the gender impact of how much it will impact the gender issues.

Audrey Tang: Even for the Ministry of Finance or Ministry to Labor, or whatever. They may not feel that they have anything to do with gender, but they required to file gender assessment for all of their work. That’s called the GIA or the Gender Impact Assessment.

Audrey Tang: The good thing out of that is that people learn the idea of what we call gender mainstreaming. Meaning that in all the public services work, they become aware that there is a discrimination going on as a bias, as a system, not as an individual that have done something wrong, but just some policy.

Audrey Tang: If you don’t think about gender inclusion, then you naturally reinforce existing stereotypes. It’s exactly because of that that when we are preparing for new policy-making as mandated, for example, by our constitution report. That’s marriage equality.

Audrey Tang: We have not only almost 40 percent women in the parliament deliberating about how to make this happen, but also the 17 affected ministries all talk regularly with 18 civil society leaders about what projects and bills they do affect inequality across genders.

Audrey Tang: Anything they measure become permanently measured in the gender dashboard, so that even after the project finishes, all of this are still tracked by the impact.

Audrey Tang: Then when the referenda and the constitutional court ruling are presented to the public service, they know exactly what to do of legalizing the bylaw, the rights and duties, but not the in-law, not the kinship between families. They know exactly what to do.

Audrey Tang: What I mean is that this takes a system of accountability, of giving explanations of the effect of each bill as a theory of change. This must be done in a way that doesn’t only talk about a few ministry relating to interior, education, or gender, but across every ministry, all 17 ministries.

Audrey Tang: That’s what must happen for this kind of system we’ve changed. You can do it on municipal level, too, but it requires a horizontal effort for the awareness of the public service.

Ky: I think it depends more like they don’t say  性別平等, this word. They use 男女平等. LGBT right is out of this…

Audrey Tang: Idea.

Ky: Yes. LGBT rights and [non-English speech] …

Audrey Tang: You also have the idea of co-creation, or 共同参画, no?

Ky: It’s still new.

Audrey Tang: Of course.

Mami Takesada: [non-English speech]

Audrey Tang: You do say it’s [non-English speech] .

Mami Takesada: [non-English speech]

Audrey Tang: It’s not the word you use?

Mami Takesada: We use for the sex, the gender.

Ky: The way you say gender equality, it’s more like [non-English speech] .

Audrey Tang: 男女共同参画, I see. Even if you say that, it’s between men and women. It’s not across the genders.

Audrey Tang: Well, that’s a simple language change. You can change the language, one bit at a time.

Mami Takesada: The language is not the main…

Audrey Tang: Issue?

Mami Takesada: Old days, Japan make the “The Law for Equal Employment Opportunity of Men and Women”. In that law, it looks like changed. But in the real life, there’s so many stereotype. Still we have. Even if they are women, they can’t understand what is the bias.

Audrey Tang: It’s disconnected with the law. Theoretically…

Mami Takesada: We have to change more in the real world. [laughs] In Taiwan, I think that it’s already changed.

Audrey Tang: It’s changed a lot.

Mami Takesada: The law is changed, and also the people’s mind is changed. In Japan, some of the local regulations changed.

Ky: I think [non-English speech] has also put lots of effort in to empower women rights or making a better office environment by their policy.

Mami Takesada: They say. By policy, but… [laughs]

Audrey Tang: In Taiwan, for a long time, for example, there was a law that maybe we learned from Japan that says that the women may take their husband’s family name, but very rarely the other way around. Back when that was still in effect, people protested against that. Many people just silently protested that by engaging in what we call de facto marriage, which avoids the registration.

Audrey Tang: That’s what the LGBT community has to do. They have to resort to civil unions or de facto marriages in a municipal level, which is blessed by the mayor but not by the minister of the interior, because they’re authorized by parliament.

Audrey Tang: Not by the parliament, but then, of course, constitutional court and the referenda eventually said that the legislation is falling short of people’s expectations of equal treatment. Before that happened, there’s literally two decade of people who are basically doing de facto marriage as a civil disobedience against this gender stereotype.

Audrey Tang: There’s many people actually are fine with the law, because they’re heteronormal people, or maybe these two couple already have the same family name anyway.

Audrey Tang: They’re not affected. They will say statement like, “We will not marry until our lesbian and gay friends can legally marry.” That is a real thing. A lot of people say that, including very prominent musicians and so on.

Audrey Tang: That became a social pressure for the parliament to make regulation that changed the social norm, not just the name of it, that actually have, for example, a gender assessment procedure who are by design, there’s one more seat by the civil society, then the minister. They must listen to the civil society, because when they vote, the ministers lose.

Audrey Tang: This kind of design is what’s needed to enforce the social norm and not just the change in name. If you reverse this number, then you get a lot of changing name. The civil society is very weak, and the social norm don’t get changed.

Audrey Tang: The agenda setting from the civil society movement, which is backed by people who are heteronormative, they support the queer community or LGBT community. That is very important.

Mami Takesada: Maybe the first thing is that we have to change the law like this. After that, we also have to change the [non-English speech] .

Audrey Tang: Gender mainstreaming, meaning that people from very young age understand that there are various possibilities in social configuration. This is the most important part.

Mami Takesada: Because of the elder people, of the…

Audrey Tang: Traditions?

Mami Takesada: Yeah, tradition and…

Audrey Tang: There’s a lot of resistance in public discussion.

Mami Takesada: [non-English speech]

Ky: [non-English speech]

Audrey Tang: There’s another way, which is simply to take something that another country or jurisdiction have developed and very stable also, and then just simply copy that as a possibility of alternative. Like in Taiwan when we did marriage equality, we have a new model. We marry the bylaw but not the in-law. We’re married to individual, but not their families.

Audrey Tang: This is something very unique in the Asia context. That is very well thought out. If you simply copy our hyperlink act, [laughs] you can avoid public discussion. [laughs] Just simply say, “Oh, Taiwan has been doing this for years. It’s working really well. Let’s just copy that.”

Audrey Tang: That’s an easy way. Frankly speaking, that’s what Taiwan did when we joined the CEDAW community. We look at everywhere in the world and see that, “Oh, gender impact assessment is a good idea,” and we just copy that idea.

Ky: Even the Supreme Court in Japan don’t go with word for women’s right to be their own family name.

Audrey Tang: I know.

Mami Takesada: [non-English speech]

Ky: [non-English speech]

Audrey Tang: Of course. It’s true that when you adopt a new system, not replace old as alternative, only a small number of people will choose to use this alternative. Of course, that is true. That creates new role models. That creates new possibilities to be…they’re still Japanese. They become viable role models.

Audrey Tang: I remember when Annette Lu became our vice-president. That’s a role model for women politicians. When Dr. Tsai Ing-wen became our president, she sets a role model for women politicians, especially because unlike all the other women leaders in Asia, her family is not a political family. She is not a daughter of a politician or a wife of a politician. She’d become the president entirely by her own merit. That becomes a really good role model. That is kind of unique.

Audrey Tang: You don’t quite see a lot of women politicians unconnected to political family a generation before. Just having one or two examples is enough for the young people to say, “Oh, this alternate system may have some benefit in using it.” That’s how social movements always work.

Mami Takesada: Time?

Mami Takesada: The last thing is that when I joined the hackathon with g0v, I think there are so many similar problems in Taiwan, Japan, and other Asian countries.

Audrey Tang: They’re quite similar in that.

Mami Takesada: When we do some good action, maybe we can copy each other, but how to communicate is my…We have to make some [non-English speech] common community. We already have the Code for All.

Mami Takesada: Code for All is for all over the world, but if we can gather Asian countries, we can discuss and work with more. Especially for some similar issues which comes from Asian culture.

Audrey Tang: I thought the community already had a Okinawa hackathon?

Mami Takesada: Yeah, “Facing the Ocean”.

Audrey Tang: Facing the Ocean.

Mami Takesada: Then we will do this weekend in Tainan, and it will be continued.

Ky: After, you can just report this on the hackathon?

Mami Takesada: [laughs] Right. I think the only problem we have is the language diffrences.

Audrey Tang: And spread the use of UDTalk?

Mami Takesada: Right. Are there any ideas about the connection with the Asian countries to do the social programs?

Audrey Tang: We work quite closely with, say, the Korean social-innovator programs. They have regular visits and also exchange programs. So much so that actually right after the election, which is January 11th, on the 13th I’ll be in Seoul to work with their social-innovation people as a mentor to their teams.

Audrey Tang: I think a lot of this exchange is not about creating solutions that are readily transferrable back. It’s about figuring out new ways of collaboration. That model is easier to carry back than any product or service because that has operational constraint. A good idea doesn’t have a operational constraint.

Mami Takesada: [laughs]

Audrey Tang: If I learn something, I could bring it back immediately. Just having more mentors and more judges, that’s really good. For example, in our annual Social Innovation Summit in Taoyuan next year and this year was in Kaohsiung. We very specifically said that our Social Innovation Partnership Award must be judged by                                                       community organizers all around Asia                                                  …

Mami Takesada: [laughs] Sunit. I went to Thailand last month with one of the judge of this award.

Audrey Tang: Exactly, and they all have their own communities. By coming together, looking at innovations in our vicinity, and saying, “Which one are the best partnerships to further the biosphere sustainability, social progress, inclusive business?”

Audrey Tang: We make sure not only this is widely useful to the Asia Pacific but also that these communities’ best practices can be shared freely among not only the contestants but among the judges. This is also very important. If you have some ideas like if Litalico works with someone who you think previously that it’s impossible for us to work with.

Audrey Tang: One of the winner this year was a collaboration with Carrefour, which is the very large corporation, Carrefour Taiwan, and an animal society of animal welfare and rights. They work on cage-free eggs as a co-promotion. They’re very, very successful. Normally, you would not think that a advocacy group at Carrefour who would work together. The more unlikely the partnership is, the more likely they will win the prize.

Audrey Tang: If you have some thoughts around that, we will roll out this year’s APSIPA, and maybe you are also welcome to be in Taiwan, and also bring along those new ideas of partnerships.

Audrey Tang: That’s easier to copy than any other product or service from any of the entities. This is the model, the partnership model that is easy to copy. Thank you.

Mami Takesada: Thank you.

Audrey Tang: It’s OK. Thank you.

Mami Takesada: Thank you so much.

Audrey Tang: Cheers.

Mami Takesada: Thanks for your time.

Audrey Tang: No problem.

Mami Takesada: If you have the time, please come to visit us. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: Of course.