Women workers
In the 1950s the United States, Japan and other nations began to move their labor-intensive industries abroad, and Taiwan moved toward economic liberalization and an export orientation so as to attract foreign investment. In 1960 the Legislative Yuan passed the Investment Incentive Act, and at the end of 1966 the ROC established the world's first export processing zone in Kaohsiung. Export industries such as textiles and electronics were labor intensive, and women were favored for their attention to detail. It's estimated that Taiwan's three export processing zones employed more than 100,000 women at their peak.
In 1972 the Kaohsiung poet Chen Kunlun wrote "Working Girl." It faithfully records the situation of female workers during that period:
Ah-hua collects her pay / She counts the bills from first to last / And then from last to first / One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine / One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine
Three of them will pay her rent / Three she'll send to Mama / The final three she'll spend on Max Factor, / Shoes and a miniskirt
These young women who had left their hometowns to find work used their meager wages to pay their rent, help their families, and keep themselves fashionable. That might mean going without breakfast, so that they'd arrive at the factory in a miniskirt but on an empty stomach. Perhaps they imagined that one day they would transform themselves, like the heroine of a Qiong Yao novel, by meeting a knight on a white horse who was both a cultured gentleman and fabulously wealthy.
Under traditional Chinese conceptions that value boys over girls, parents put top priority on educating their sons. The daughters, meanwhile, typically entered the workforce after elementary school or junior high. Along with finding economic independence, these girls and young women still wanted to pursue their studies. Intent on advancing their educations even without their family's help, many would go to night schools or subsidiary schools (designed for older students) after they got off work. Chen recalls that Kaohsiung's subsidiary schools back then were packed full. That striving for educational attainment represents another kind of Taiwan miracle.
In Taiwan women's participation in the workforce has always been low (it was 39.13% in 1978 and still only 49.62% in 2009-well below the US rate of 60%). But even if women stay out of the labor force for various family reasons-whether to care for their children or for their husband's parents-they have always worked hard. And often their paid work isn't included in official statistics: A small number have opened food stalls and become their own bosses; many more have earned a little extra cash by doing piecework at home.
In the mid-1970s, under former Taiwan governor Hsieh Tung-min's "home as a factory" policy, Taiwan formally entered a period of economically mobilizing its entire population. From the handmade Christmas lights and stuffed toys early on, to the piecework for apparel makers in the current era, women's skilled hands have long helped to put the label "Made in Taiwan" in every Western home.
Taiwan's minimum monthly wage is now NT$17,280. Meanwhile, the going rate for affixing pompoms is just NT$2 per ski cap, so you'd have to cut the wool on 8,640 pompoms just to make the minimum monthly wage. Piled up, the yarn required for that many pompoms would cover a whole wall!
The various textile products spread out on a low platform bear witnessto the economic miracle rendered by individual families under government policies "to turn homes into factories" and "economically mobilize the entire population." In some tows many households still do piecework at home.