Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/05/03
By: Sophia Yeh and Lilian Wu

Taipei, May 3 (CNA) Several women’s groups descended on the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP’s) headquarters Tuesday to protest the low number of women in the incoming Cabinet to be led by Premier Lin Chuan (林全).

There are only four women among the 40 members of Lin’s Cabinet, equaling the lowest ratio since Taiwan’s democracy was just beginning to take shape, they said.

“The situation has regressed to the gender equality level of 1996, when Taiwan held its first popular presidential election and had just entered the stage of democratic transformation,” according to a joint statement issued by the groups.

The lowest ratio of women in the Cabinet over the past 25 years was 10 percent in the Cabinet of then-Premier Vincent Siew in 1997, even lower than the 13.5 percent of women in Lien Chan’s (連戰) Cabinet in 1993.   [FULL  STORY]