News
Number of female board members lags males in listed firms
The cabinet's Gender Equality Committee says data shows that the number of female board members in companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the over-the-counter market is far below the number of male board members.
According to the committee's 2024 report on gender, listed companies recorded a total of 2,233 female board members in 2022, an increase of 861 from a year earlier. Female board members accounted for 15.6% of the total, up 3.5 percentage points from a year earlier while male board members at listed companies in 2022 stood at 12,125, making up 84.4% of the total.
However, the committee says the number of small and medium enterprises owned by women hit 603,000 in 2022 and that was a 27% rise from a year earlier - and means that women make up 37.3% of the total. By sector, the service sector saw female-owned businesses account for almost 40% of the total, compared with 24.6% in the agricultural and mineral sector and 27.1% in the industrial sector.
In other gender-related news, the Gender Equality Committee says data show the percentage of new fathers who applied for parental leave reached a new high in 2022.
Data indicates the number of married parents who took parental leave that year totalled 99,500 of which or 25.2% were male spouses. That percentage was a sharp increase from 19.1% in 2021 and 18.2% in 2020. The figures are included in the committee's 2024 report on gender.
The increase came after the government's July 2021 raising of the parental leave allowance for working parents with children under the age of three from 60 to 80% of their insured salary for up to six months. The increase was part of an amendment to the Employment Insurance Act.
The amendment also included allowing parents the option of taking parental leave a month or more at a time and allowing both parents to claim parental leave allowance at the same time if they are both covered by employment insurance.
