Sisters, stand up!
Just as Rachel Wang says, Taiwan has been pursuing gender equality for many years now, but there are still too many women who do not enjoy independence and autonomy in the four main areas of knowledge, character, emotion, and economics. Therefore they are unable to really stand as equals with men.
It looks like there is still a long road ahead for the feminist movement in Taiwan. Besides setting down roots and deepening, how can the movement rejuvenate itself so that the torch can be passed on from generation to generation?
One answer is localization. Activists-who have generally been deeply influenced by Western thinking-have in recent years been trying to develop more "localized" topics of specific relevance to Taiwan. Examples of such issues include sexism in local religious life and the problems of new immigrants.
Let's look at religious ritual, for example. During the Tomb Sweeping Festival this year, New Awakening made efforts to draw attention to the phenomenon of altars for deceased unmarried daughters, in hopes that society would begin to devote more attention to gender inequality in traditional religious belief.
Wu Wei-ting explains that traditional custom forbids placing memorial tablets to deceased unmarried daughters inside the house. Therefore, when a young unmarried woman dies, her memorial tablet is placed in a guniang miao ("unmarried girls' temple"). In this context, the word guniang not only implies that the deceased girl is unmarried, but is also "orphaned" as well, with no place that her soul can properly call "home." "The guniang miao tradition clearly demonstrates the importance of marital status for women," says Wu Wei-ting, adding: "If commemorating deceased ancestors and family members is a form of respect and reverence, is it right that all women who remain single, get divorced, or choose a homosexual lifestyle are to be eradicated from the history of the lineage and forgotten?"
A volunteer at the New Awakening Foundation has written that after her divorce she was perplexed over how to cope with traditional rituals: Should she follow the traditional custom of married women returning to their parents' home on Lunar New Year's Eve? What (or where) would be her place on tomb sweeping day? What would happen after she died? "A woman, once married, is considered by tradition to have left her own family, but once divorced she also no longer belongs with her husband's family. So where should her memorial tablet go after she dies? Who will pay reverence to her soul and make the necessary prayers and offerings to see that it is well settled in the next world? This is how a paternalistic society punishes women who stray from the system!"
Warm Life's Rachel Wang says with a sigh that the fear of being a "wandering ghost with no one to look after her" deeply affected her own mother, encouraging her to hang on in her unhappy marriage to the bitter end. Wang, who got divorced two years ago, admits that she doesn't know what will become of her in the next world, but hopes that more and more families of divorced women will welcome them back home.
Besides paying more attention to issues of a peculiarly local nature, women's groups are also keeping up with international trends, hoping to draw on what is going on outside Taiwan to strengthen the movement here.
Yu Mei-nu says that in the past women's groups that had wide international contacts were often little more than social clubs for the wives of top government officials, whereas groups doing real grass-roots feminist work had no opportunities to get their message out or come in contact with foreign activists. She thinks that the time has come for women's groups from Taiwan to actively seek participation in international organizations, in order to broaden the perspective of the movement.
Women's groups got a start on Women's Day (March 8) of this year, when they gathered at the door of the ROC Ministry of Foreign Affairs to issue a declaration expressing opposition to the US attack on Iraq. After former "comfort women" and relatives of victims of the February 28 Incident spoke on the horrors of war, women came up to read the joint declaration in Taiwan's various dialects, and the event closed with the singing of an Atayal Aboriginal anti-war song.
Of course, the war was not in the least affected by the protest. But it is gratifying that on this subject at least there was a broad consensus among local feminist organizations, returning to the basic starting points of the women's movement: love, peace, justice, and human rights. Perhaps it is by returning to basic humane values that the women's movement in Taiwan will enjoy a resurgence.
an attorney at Evergreen Law Offices: "in the past the feminist movement was mainly about shouting slogans. In the future it will have to get down to more precise and detailed work."
Everybody talks about gender equality, but everywhere you still see women commodified. Ideas about gender equality have not made themselves felt in many aspects of life in Taiwan. (photo by Jimmy Lin)
Fembooks, its mission completed, will likely close soon. Taiwan's feminist movement is at a turning point, with old leaders passing the baton to a new generation.