The Advisory Panel on Gender Mainstreaming of the Presidential Office has been established today in order to promote gender mainstreaming and equality.
Chairing the panel will be President Chen, Secretary-General Yu Shyi-kun will be assigned as the chief executive officer and professor Chen Hwei-syin of National Chengchi University will be named the deputy executive officer. In addition, there will be a ten-member advisory panel, each representing a different professional field. Among the consulting committee members are Senior Advisor Yeh Chu-lan, Professor Liu Chung-tung of the National Defense Medical Center, Chairwoman Su Chien-ling of the Taiwan Gender Equity Education Association, and Director-General Chiang Mei-hui of the Kaohsiung Aboriginal Woman Sustainable Development Association Taiwan. Those invited to become members of the panel also include Sister Stephana Wei Wei who aids foreign brides and workers as the director of the Rerum Novarum Center, chairwoman Liu Yu-hsiu of Pen Wang-ru Foundation, social welfare scholar Lin Wan-I, advocate for environmental protection concerns and women issues Chen Man-li, gender equality education scholar You Mei-hui, and Professor Fan Yun of the Academia Sinica.
Secretary-General Yu emphasized that for the past 20 years the United Nations has been promoting this concept of gender mainstreaming, which aims to encourage governments to pay more attention to the issue of gender equality when it comes to drafting legislation, policymaking or even coordinating events. Governments must also review the past actions for any unfair gender discrimination in order to help promote and instill gender equality as a guiding social principal. Since 1985, countries in the world have been integrating this idea of "gender mainstreaming" into their respective society's development, a concept that was once considered solely a women's issue.
The Secretary-General indicated that President Chen always supported women's rights and women engaging themselves in politics. Soon after he became Taipei mayor in 1996, he established the Commission on Women Rights Promotion of Taipei City. As chairman of the commission, he chose scholars and experts from various women's associations to be on the commission to ensure an objective platform for political organizations and individuals to speak out and provide policy suggestions. The Secretary-General also pointed out that on March 4th, 2005 president Chen received the representatives of the Executive Yuan's Commission on Women Rights Promotion. After exchanging his views with the commission, which included the recognition of Taiwan's democratic obligation to establish social gender equality through the policy of gender mainstreaming, president Chen instructed to invite a few members of the Executive Yuan's women rights commission to form the Advisory Panel on Gender Mainstreaming of the Presidential Office.
In the future, this gender equality panel of the presidential office will provide relevant suggestions on issues concerning gender equality and gender mainstreaming, and resolve inter-departmental gender disputes through meetings and discussions with the relevant department heads, convened by the president.
The Secretary-General also mentioned that the president would preside over the gender equality panel's first meeting in August this year. The principal issue that the panel will discuss is the influence that gender mainstreaming has over national development. This panel will eventually establish a platform, linking the presidential office to other civilian women's groups and prominent women's rights activists, to conduct theoretic and pragmatic dialogues so that Taiwan is on its way to becoming a society that upholds gender equality.