In Europe, in episodes which the media have described as "super politicians struck down by arrows one by one," Italian politics has recently been rocked by corruption scandals which have brought down six government ministers, and two-and-a-half thousand public officials have ended up behind bars. In France, former Prime Minister Pierre Beregovoy recently committed suicide amid rumors of corruption.
After a succession of corruption scandals which shattered the public's faith in it, Japan's Liberal Democratic Party has lost its position as "the eternal ruling party."
By contrast, South Korea's President Kim Young Sam has moved against corruption with an iron hand, and it is no surprise that his measures have found widespread popular support.
Here in the R.O.C., the Ministry of Justice is also working against corruption with its current campaign of "Taking the Knife to Corruption."
The most important consideration behind the government's efforts to stamp out corruption is that corruption threatens the government's authority and credibility, seriously diminishing the public's trust in it. It is not hard to imagine that if services which it is the government's job to provide are only carried out with the enticement of "red envelopes," then no one will have faith in such a government.
Hong Kong and Singapore, which also count among Asia's four "little tigers," were also bedeviled by corruption during their periods of rapid economic development. But because their governments took effective measures against corruption, society generally took a turn for the cleaner. In Hong Kong in particular, the government's Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), which was set up nearly twenty years ago, has not only effectively reduced crime, but has provided a model which other countries are trying hard to emulate in their own anticorruption agencies.
In the R.O.C., during the first Executive Yuan meeting under his premiership Premier Lien Chan named "clean and able government" as a major policy for his administration. In line with this policy the Ministry of Justice has prepared an Anti-Corruption Plan, the four main aims of which are to make public officials "afraid to be corrupt, unable to be corrupt, unwilling to be corrupt and free of the need to be corrupt."
Explaining these four aims, Justice Minister Ma Ying-jeou says that making people afraid to be corrupt takes strict laws; making them unable to be corrupt takes comprehensive preventive measures; the way to make them unwilling to be corrupt is to instil in public servants a sense of honor in uprightness and shame in corruption; and for civil servants to have no need to be corrupt depends on giving then adequate salaries, so that they can afford to stay clean, and do not need to rely on ill-gotten gains.
But can such measures act in time? What worries the public is whether the government can achieve any concrete results with which to restore public confidence. Our cover story this month, which includes interviews and an opinion poll, looks at the Executive Yuan's Anti-Corruption plan and politicians' calls for action against corruption.
In the process of transition to a developed country, difficulties face us, but we are also working hard. How will the government fare in its efforts to meet the public's demands to stamp out corruption?+ ` qq+
According to the best-selling book Megatrends 2000, of the many hundreds of new job categories which have sprung up over the last 20 years, two-thirds are monopolized by women.
The range of jobs and careers open to women has expanded continuously, breaking away from the limited areas of office work, simple assembly work, teaching etc. of the past, and expanding almost unnoticed into the "man's world" of computers, technical research and development, product marketing and so on; and women have excelled in all these domains.
Today it is the turn of the men to make their appearance in the field of nursing, traditionally seen as "women's work." In many countries there is nothing unusual about men working as nurses. But in the R.O.C., the concept of "male nurses" is a new one, and they are still in the minority. Taipei's City Psychiatric Center and Veterans' General Hospital, which probably employ the largest numbers of male nurses, have only seven and eight male nurses respectively.
Generally speaking hospital managements like male nurses for such qualities as their greater physical strength, courage, the fact that they will not need "maternity leave," and their greater willingness to work night shifts. But nonetheless male nurses have many obstacles to overcome in their work apart from mastering their professional skills.
Firstly patients, especially women patients, are often unwilling to accept male nurses. In gynecology departments, expectant mothers can accept male doctors, but many are not willing to be attended by male nursing staff. The male nurses of the R.O.C., whose working history is still short, find themselves confronted by many invisible walls. This is why at present almost all male nurses are to be found in emergency rooms, operating theaters and other units with a "heavy" workload.
Secondly, in the university entrance examinations, medicine enjoys by far the highest prestige among the Group C subjects, and many male nurses are not afraid to admit that they only entered the nursing department because their exam results fell short of what they had hoped for. If they had the chance they would still like to sit the exams again and become doctors. Because society still maintains the stereotype that "doctors are men and nurses are women," plus the fact that there is a wide gap in terms of social status and remuneration between physicians and nurses, male nurses are dissatisfied with their lowly position in hospitals, and given the opportunity will change jobs; very few are intent on making nursing their career.
Today, when the idea of "equality of the sexes" is vigorously promoted, and with the current dearth of staff in the nursing profession, male nurses should be welcomed with open arms. Leaving aside the question of whether or not the differences in pay and social standing between doctors and nurses are unfair, skilled professionals should not be limited or categorized on the basis of their gender, but should be able to follow career paths in line with their interests, abilities and aptitude.
At the same time as women are gradually casting off the roles allotted them by traditional stereotypes, shouldn't men too be throwing off the burden of gender roles and really seeking their own path?
