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Continuity and Change: Comparing Work and Care Reconciliation of Two Generations of Women in Taiwan

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Gender and Welfare States in East Asia

Abstract

There is no shortage of statistical data shedding light on how far Taiwan has been changing over the past 40 years. Transformations in industrial composition, family structure and the educational system, combined with some reworking of state welfare policy, have shifted the dynamics of Taiwanese society. The labour market especially has witnessed a considerable movement of married women into paid work. Compared with less than a quarter of married women being engaged in gainful employment in the late 1960s, the labour force participation rate had doubled (48 per cent) by the mid-2000s (DGBAS 2005). In particular, the employment rates in the 2000s comprise a high proportion of those women who have pre-school children (Council of Labour Affairs 2006). While in the late 1960s and the 1970s (Chang 1999), the cultural script of ‘being a woman’ almost overlapped with ‘being a mother’, the role of women today very often encompasses both mother and wage earner (Lui 2000).

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Authors
  1. Jessie Shu-Yun Wu
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Queen’s University Belfast, UK

    Sirin Sung

  2. University of Nottingham, UK

    Gillian Pascall

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© 2014 Jessie Shu-Yun Wu

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Wu, J.SY. (2014). Continuity and Change: Comparing Work and Care Reconciliation of Two Generations of Women in Taiwan. In: Sung, S., Pascall, G. (eds) Gender and Welfare States in East Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137314796_4

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