Noah Smith | Theme Section Editor (Issue 20.2)
Introduction
On 16 June, the Oxford Taiwan Studies Programme at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (OSGA) hosted Professor Chang-Ling Huang of National Taiwan University. Huang is a Professor of Political Science and the Director of the Global Asia Research Center at the National Taiwan University, and was a joint fellow of the Harvard-Yenching Institute and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University in 2018-2019. Her research focuses on women’s political representation, women’s movements, and state feminism. Outside of academia, Professor Huang is an active participant in Taiwan’s feminist movement.
During Monday’s Taiwan Studies Programme seminar, Professor Huang posed the question: Is Taiwan leading Asia in women’s political representation? Her reply was twofold: yes and no. While Taiwan is leading Asia in progressive gender politics by several popular indicators—including the percentage of women in parliament, legalisation of same sex marriage, and election of female president—the country trails in achieving the desired effects of gender quotas in national and local elections, enhancing women’s representation in cabinet positions, and challenging gender stereotypes for women in politics.
Where is Taiwan leading?
Professor Huang noted that Taiwan’s rhetoric on gender equality can give the impression that it leads Asia in women’s rights and political representation. This portrayal, she argued, is based on three popular indicators: Taiwan has the highest percentage of women in parliament (42%) across Asia; it is the first Asian country to legalise same sex marriage; and it elected a female president who did not come from a political family.
Taiwan’s long-standing gender quotas in elections significantly expanded women’s representation in Taiwan’s parliament. There are three types of gender quotas:
Party quotas: political parties require the selection of a certain number of women candidates by internal mandate.
Legislative quotas: all political parties are required by the national legislature to select a certain number of women candidates in elections.
Reserved seats for women: it is mandatory to reserve a certain number of seats for women in the legislature.
Today, Taiwan utilises all three types of gender quotas.
The global trend of gender quotas began in the 1990s, but Taiwan was ahead of the trend by over 20 years. Before the Republic of China government retreated to Taiwan in 1949, it engaged with women’s movements on the mainland. When the Republic of China promulgated its 1946 Constitution, its main text included a clause about women’s reserved seats at all electoral levels. Following the retreat and the enactment of martial law on Taiwan, the authoritarian Kuomintang (KMT) regime still held elections. While these elections were not fair, women’s reserved seats were still recognised to some extent.
Following Taiwan’s democratisation in the late 1980s, opposition parties were legalised and electoral reforms were made. As Taiwan grew into a multi-party democracy, political parties began to implement their own gender quotas. In 1996, the Democratic Progressive Party established a one-fourth gender-neutral quota. This means that for every four candidate nominations, each sex should be represented at least once. Later, the 1998 Local Government Act reserved one-fourth of the seats for any electoral district at all levels of government. Another key reform is found in the 2005 Constitutional Amendment. This Amendment changed Taiwan’s electoral rule to a three-tier mixed-member electoral system, and stipulated that half of the party list seats were to be women. This mix of long-term gender quotas is partially responsible for Taiwan’s leading position in women’s representation in Asia.
As mentioned before, Taiwan was the first country in Asia to legalise same-sex marriage, following a constitutional court ruling in 2017 and the passage of a legislative bill in 2019. Only two other countries in Asia have since legalised same-sex marriage: Nepal in 2023 and Thailand in 2025. Another indicator that shows Taiwan’s progressive gender politics was the election of President Tsai Ing-wen in 2016. While other countries in Asia have also elected female heads of state, Tsai was the only one who did not come from an established political family. In fact, she is the first and only person in her family to ever enter politics.
Where does Taiwan fall behind?
The three popular indicators above all support the claim that Taiwan is leading Asia in women’s political representation and progressive gender politics. This claim, however, requires further qualifications, according to Professor Huang. Barriers to Taiwan’s path toward greater gender equality can be seen in the implementation of gender quotas, significant variations among local councils, the low proportion of women in Taiwan’s cabinet, and the prevalence of gender stereotypes in cabinet positions.
Taiwan’s gender quotas, in all three forms, mainly follow the pattern of one-fourth representation. It is important to note that local assemblies in Taiwan operate under a single non-transferable vote electoral system. The issue is that these quotas only apply to district magnitudes of four and multiples thereof. This means that if the number of electoral seats is above four but below eight, still only one seat is reserved for women, which affects a political party’s nomination strategy for female candidates. This means that in practice, gender quotas only reserve 15-25% of seats. In terms of the 2005 Constitutional Amendment, because Taiwan uses a three-tier mixed-member electoral system, party seats only account for 30% of the legislature. The 50% quota for party list seats means an overall requirement of only 15% female representation.
Relatedly, as local councils vary in size, there are a number of districts that have no women representation at all. If an electoral district’s magnitude is smaller than four, there is no reserved seat for women, and parties have no incentive to nominate female candidates. Magnitude is determined by population size, highlighting the urban-rural gap — those countryside districts where women's empowerment is most needed have the least opportunity to nominate them. This has resulted in 40-45% no-women districts at the town/township levels.
Regarding the proportion of women in the cabinet, Taiwan lags behind its East Asian neighbours. In 2021, women made up 7.1% of Taiwan’s cabinet under President Tsai, compared to 27.8% in South Korea and 10% in Japan. In 2024, following the election of President Lai Ching-te, the proportion of women in Taiwan’s cabinet rose to 23.5%, but Japan still showed a higher percentage with 27%.
Women in Taiwan’s cabinet also still face a level of gender stereotyping. In South Korea, women have held the positions of premier, minister of foreign affairs, and minister of veterans affairs. In Japan, women have held the positions of minister of defense and minister of foreign affairs. Taiwan, on the other hand, has never had a woman hold premiership, the minister of defense position, the minister of foreign affairs positions, or any other security or defense portfolios. Women’s absence from “traditionally male” portfolios, Professor Huang argued, may be linked to Taiwan’s geopolitical isolation. She noted that because security and defense are considered “high politics” in this context, women are often not seen as suitable for such roles.
Future Reforms
Professor Huang concluded with a few areas for future reform. First, Huang proposed a change in the Local Governments Act. Her research found that increases in women’s reserved seats reduce their reliance on reserved seats to get elected. The single non-transferrable vote system has induced more competitive women to run for office, thus increasing political competition. Using election data from 2002 to 2009, she found that 90% of the women elected through reserved seats had equal or better qualifications than the men they replaced. Under these conditions, she proposed that the Local Government Act should replace reserved seats with an increase in the gender-neutral quota from one-fourth to one-third. Increasing the gender-neutral quotas would level the playing field for female candidates while easing resistance from male politicians, since gender-neutral quotas also help preserve male representation.
Second, while there is currently little momentum for change at the national legislature level, Huang advocated increasing the proportion of party seats in the legislature to promote greater balance between tiers. Since party seats account for only 30% of the legislature, expanding their share would allow existing gender quotas to yield more women members of parliament.
Third, Huang noted that non-governmental decision-making bodies should also have quota regulations. The percentage of women as board members in the business sector has remained less than 20%. As it stands, women’s representation on company boards is regulated by government policies, not laws. The government’s Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) action plan stipulates that the boards of all IPOs, publicly listed companies, and over-the-counter companies must be at least 33.3% women under a comply-or-explain framework. While this is a welcomed step, this model does not guarantee compliance; mandatory requirements should be enacted, as Professor Huang noted.
Conclusions
Answering the question Is Taiwan leading Asia in women’s political representation? requires us to look beyond popular indicators. It is true that Taiwan has held Asia’s highest proportion of women in the legislature since 2020, but it is also true that Taiwan’s cabinet has a lower proportion of women than other Asian nations. It is true that Taiwan elected the only female president from a non-political family background, but it is also true that 20% of electoral districts across the country produce no women representatives at all. Professor Huang’s talk reminded us that advancing the rights and representation of underrepresented communities requires more than meeting surface-level benchmarks.
The seminar is organised by Dr Bo-jiun Jing, Senior Research Fellow in Taiwan Studies at OSGA, as part of the Oxford Taiwan Studies Seminar Series. This recap is produced in partnership between the Oxford Taiwan Studies Programme and St Antony’s International Review.
