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Written by Sheng-Hui Tseng.
Image credit: Public domain.
In late May 2023, a Facebook post by Chien-Jou Chen (陳汘瑈), a former staffer of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), sparked the #MeToo Movement in Taiwan. Chen opened up about her experience of being sexually harassed by a filmmaker DPP worked within 2018 and how her supervisor, Hsu Chia-Tien (許嘉恬), who was also the Department Head of Women’s Affairs at that time, attempted to dismiss her claims. Chen’s post soon went viral and was followed by a series of accusations against abusers and enablers in different professions. Triggered by the Netflix hit “Wave Makers,” this wave of allegations pushed the government to review gender equality laws in Taiwan, and amendments were passed by the end of July 2023. Given that institutional changes have been made, it is time to think about whether and how they can be effective in challenging the culture that fostered a plethora of unreported and mishandled sexual harassment incidents in politics.
Institutional Response to the #MeToo Movement in Taiwan
Three pieces of anti-sexual harassment legislation were amended in response to the belated #MeToo Movement in Taiwan, including the Gender Equality in Employment Act, the Gender Equity Education Act, and the Sexual Harassment Prevention Act; these laws respectively address sexual harassment that occurs in the workplace, schools, and places other than the aforementioned. Key changes included the extended scope of coverage of these laws, codification of power-abused sexual harassment (權勢性騷擾, referring to the type of sexual harassment that the harasser holds supervisory or positional power over the harassed), and the extended timeframe for filling the complaints.
First, in terms of the scope of coverage, the Gender Equality in Employment Act now applies to sexual harassment by colleagues, employers, or work-related third parties during off-hours; the Gender Equity Education Act now covers public and private schools of all levels, including military academies, preparatory schools, police academies, and juvenile correctional institutions. Second, the issue of imbalance of positional power was emphasised in amendments to all three laws. For example, the Gender Equality in Employment Act and the Sexual Harassment Prevention Act differentiate sexual harassment cases where the perpetrator holds positional or supervisory power over the victim, imposing heavier punishment on perpetrators in such cases. The Gender Equity Education Act explicitly prohibits intimate relationships between educators and students, stating such behaviours violate the professional ethics of educators. Also, the law requires all members of the investigation committee to be external appointees for cases of sexual harassment where the perpetrator is the principal, a faculty member, or a staffer while the victim is a student.
Lastly, the window for filing sexual harassment complaints was extended to create a more victim-friendly grievance and investigation scheme. Prior to the amendment, victims of sexual harassment were given merely one year to file the complaint. Currently, new amendments ensure that a victim may file a complaint within two years of awareness of the incident or within five years after the harassment takes place. For power-abused sexual harassment, given it might be more difficult for victims to come forward, they may file a complaint within three years of awareness of the incident or seven years of the harassment. Further, if the victim was a minor when sexually harassed, they might file a complaint within three years of reaching legal age.
For workplace sexual harassment in particular, important amendments to the Gender Equality in Employment Act include increasing employers’ duty to sexual harassment prevention, introducing penalties on perpetrators of power-abused sexual harassment and establishing external grievance and complaint schemes. For example, Article 13 stipulates that employers must take immediate and effective measures when they become aware of sexual harassment in the workplace, regardless of whether the victim files a complaint or not. Employers should notify the local competent authority when receiving a sexual harassment complaint and report the result to it when the case is determined to be sexual harassment. In terms of punishment, employers who fail to set up internal preventive measures against sexual harassment, establish a grievance and complaint scheme, or take immediate and corrective actions after becoming aware of sexual harassment cases are subject to fines. The amendments also clearly define penalties for power-abused sexual harassment, including fines, compensation, and channels for victims to file complaints with local competent authorities.
While these changes were made to tackle workplace sexual harassment and remind employers of their legal duties, there remain concerns about their practical effectiveness. Feminist lawyers and members of women’s organisations pointed out that issues such as third-party sexual harassment or workplace retaliation stay unaddressed in the Gender Equality in Employment Act, and amendments to the employer’s duty do not necessarily guarantee that employees will be encouraged to speak up or report when harassed. Therefore, a review of workplace culture in Taiwanese politics is relevant to how the new rules are likely to play out in reality.
Returning to Where the Waves Rose: The Workplace of Politics
Since Taiwan’s belated #MeToo Movement was sparked by sexual harassment in politics, I figured it is important to discuss whether and how the revision of the Gender Equality in Employment Act responds to this issue in the workplace of politics. In 2022, I conducted a case study on sexual harassment in politics in Taiwan for my master’s degree. I found that both the institutional and cultural aspects of the workplace of politics contributed to the structural vulnerability of women working in politics.
After the revision of the Gender Equality in Employment Act, the definition of workplace sexual harassment includes those perpetrated by worked-related third parties and/or during off-hours, which is a common type of sexual harassment in the workplace of politics. According to my interviewees, cross-departmental and cross-organisational collaboration was common in the workplace of politics, and third-party sexual harassment in politics was prevalent and could take place on various occasions. It could occur between employees of different legislators’ offices, in a campaign team that consists of workers from different organisations, or between political staffers and local brokers or resource providers.
For example, legislative assistants might network or “hang out” with each other (sometimes also with journalists) after regular work hours, and sexual harassment can happen when drinking is involved; women politicians and young female staffers, especially assistants to representatives or campaign workers, commonly experienced sexual harassment from male voters. The Gender Equality in Employment Act now requires employers to resolve third-party sexual harassment experienced by their employees; however, under the current rule, sexual harassment by voters is not considered a form of third-party sexual harassment.
According to the Gender Equality in Employment Act (Article 12), “acts committed by unidentified individuals in public places or places accessible to the public, the investigations, mediations, and penalties related to sexual harassment incidents shall apply provisions of the Sexual Harassment Prevention Act.” While it does not make sense to ask politicians or parties to contact the employer of a voter who sexually harasses their staff, they should still fulfil their duty to sexual harassment prevention by taking immediate actions when staffers report harassment by identifiable constituents. My interviewees noted that since their teams often interact with voters and participate in local activities, it is possible to identify voters who engage in inappropriate behaviour. This shows that certain types of third-party workplace sexual harassment are exceptions in the law. Employers are not required to perform their legal duty to maintain a work environment free of sexual harassment under the circumstances, which makes women working in politics continue to be vulnerable to sexual harassment and discourages them from reporting sexual harassment they experience at work.
Relatedly, the Gender Equality in Employment Act has yet to cover sexual harassment between politicians, such as verbal or physical sexual harassment that occurs in parliamentary settings. Legislators and municipal councillors, for instance, cannot use the internal procedures established by these legislative bodies to file a sexual harassment complaint because people’s representatives are not employed by the parliament or local councils. This has been why legislators or councillors who were sexually harassed by a colleague at work had to file a complaint to the city government (the local competent authority) or take legal action against the harassers instead of following the complaint procedure of the parliament or councils.
Further, currently, prohibition on sexual harassment and sexism is still excluded in the parliamentary code of conduct. Similarly, all the local councilwomen I interviewed previously shared that there was no internal grievance scheme or disciplinary rules regarding sexual harassment or sexism applicable to representatives in the local councils they served. Workplace sexual harassment in politics thus remains largely unregulated, and women who hold substantive institutional and political power remain unprotected by anti-sexual harassment policy in the workplace. Nonetheless, it is worth noting that DPP legislator Yun Fan and the DPP party caucus have proposed bills to include anti-sexual harassment and anti-sexism policies in the Code of Conduct for Legislators; these two bills are currently under review in the Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee in the Legislative Yuan.
In addition, changes to the workplace culture of politics in decisive in combating sexual harassment in politics. Although Taiwanese law makers responded promptly to the wave of #MeToo allegations, certain characteristics, and existing culture of politics as a workplace are likely to limit the effectiveness of these institutional changes. Based on my interview data, several factors contributed to prevalent sexual harassment in politics and made it difficult for victims to seek institutional assistance. To begin with, the numerical and normative male dominance strengthens the masculine culture of politics, which perpetuates a workplace culture in which women frequently experience sexual objectification and sexual harassment. Secondly, informal institutions can be more robust than formal ones in the workplace of politics. The “rule-of-man” nature in the workplace culture, characterised by emphasis on personal network, relationships, and loyalty, a closed “recruitment pool” of candidates and staffers, and informal rules of layoff, promotion, or punishment, easily puts political staffers in a disadvantaged and vulnerable position. Many interviewees mentioned that sexual harassment was not only tolerated but also often normalised in different settings in the workplace of politics.
In the wave of #MeToo allegations, we saw lots of cases where the harasser was the one who held more positional or institutional power or had more resources than the victim. However, in my previous research, lots of interviewees talked about cases where there was not a gap in positional or institutional power or resources between the harasser and the harassed. For women political staffers, the harassers were typically male colleagues or peers. For local councilwomen, surprisingly, perpetrators can be government officials in the executive branch, who they oversee. Some councilwomen revealed that their male colleagues or local officials groped them at work or in private social events where other colleagues or local officials were present. Some talked about how male colleagues or local officials would randomly make physical contact with them, such as causally touching their hands or shoulders or putting hands on their knees and trying to get very close when talking to them. These acts were just so subtle and made the harassed hesitant about how to react because any reaction could be interpreted as an overreaction.
In contrast to the abuse of supervisory/positional power that was emphasised in the revision of gender equality laws, these examples demonstrate the abuse of cultural power that is granted to men by patriarchy. This cultural power serves as a source of informal power that allows men to sexually harass women who hold more or equal formal power or resources than them. In other words, having positional or institutional power is still not enough for women to overcome their disadvantage in the imbalanced power relations of gender under the patriarchal structure. Examining and understanding how this patriarchal cultural power works is thus the first step to dismantling the structure fostering sexual harassment in politics.
Sheng-Hui Tseng is a PhD student of Political Science and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. Her research interests include comparative politics and gender politics, with a focus on women’s political representation and participation in East Asian democracies. She can be reached at sqt5667@psu.edu.
This article was published as part of a special issue on ‘The #MeToo Movement One Year On.’
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