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Abstract

In both Han and Indigenous electoral constituencies, the proportion of women elected to city and county councils has shown a steady upward trend. While female candidates from both groups encounter comparable challenges during their campaigns, significant differences remain. This exploratory study seeks to identify and analyze the key factors that influence Indigenous women’s candidacies in local council elections. Drawing on qualitative data collected through indepth interviews, this paper focuses on the recruitment processes of Indigenous female candidates, the structural and cultural barriers and opportunities encountered
during electoral campaigns, and the candidates’ perspectives on women’s participation in the political sphere. Findings indicate that, in contrast to the female reserved seat system implemented in Han constituencies, the effectiveness of such mechanisms in Indigenous districts is relatively constrained, functioning primarily as an incentive for candidacy rather than a guarantee of representation. Although traditional customs may limit female candidates’ participation in certain ceremonial or cultural activities, the decreasing resistance from clan structures has opened up greater space for women to engage in electoral politics. Notably, candidates who secure support from their clan networks are more likely to achieve electoral success. Electoral mobilisation in Indigenous constituencies tends to rely on an outreach strategy, involving face-to-face engagement with individual voters. Religious institutions, particularly churches, serve as critical venues for campaign activities. However, non-Christian candidates may find their outreach capacities restricted due to limited access to these communal platforms. Furthermore, proficiency in Indigenous languages has been found to enhance candidates’ ability to broaden their support base among voters.
Overall, the dynamics of clan and tribal politics significantly shape the distinctive features of Indigenous elections, underscoring the structural divergences from electoral practices observed in Han constituencies.

Keywords

Indigenous female candidate
female reserved seat system
campaign mobilisation
clan and tribal politics
gender

Abstract

This study applies 2003 Taiwan Social Change Survey data to examine gender differences in political participation and possible explanations. The major explanations for gender differences in political participations are two: first, women are less politically active due to women's incapable of participation. Men and women locate in different social status or face different private situations, in return, they own different participatory resources and conditions. Secondly, women are less willing to participate; because of the socialization effect women are relatively passive in terms of political engagement. The gaps in recognition and attitude then translate into political behaviors. Recent studies in political participation have gradually changed focus from resource-and-condition to recognition-and-attitude. This primary analysis also finds that the cause of gender difference in political participation lies less in resource-and-condition and more in recognition-and-attitude. However, resource-and-condition and recognition-and-motivation are not independent factors, individual motivation for political participation are shaped and constrained by his/her resources and conditions. This study thither applies path analysis to untangle the different impacts of various factors, to see how they interactively directly and indirectly deeply and slightly influence gender differences in political participation.

Keywords

gender difference
political participation
social structure
private situation
political engagement

Abstract

Since the direct presidential election was held in Taiwan 12 years ago, for the first time a significant voting gender gap appeared in the 2008 presidential election. Women voters supported candidate Ma which boosted him winning the president election. This study attempts to explore why there was such a substantial gender gap in that election. To explain the gender gap, we first compared the factors in explaining voting decision-candidate evaluation, issue positions, socioeconomic factors, and party identification, to see if gender gap exists in these factors. Furthermore, we applied the logit models to examine whether gender differences in these factors lead to voting gender gap. The models show that although gender gaps were evident on voters' candidate evaluation, party identification, some issue positions and socioeconomic conditions, not all of these differences translated into voting gender gaps. Gender differences in party identification remained the strongest factor in explaining gender difference in voting choices. Comparatively, the voting gender gap caused by party identification is evident in that women were less likely to identify with pan-Green party, and pan-Green women might vote across their party line. We further examine respectively the interaction between voters' party identification and candidate factor, and the interaction between voters' party identification and issue evaluation. The results show that candidate factor is not the underlying factor linking the gender gap in party identification and voting gender gap. But the distance of issue positions between voters and parties/candidates on social welfare and environment might explain why women voters identify differently from men with parties and how these differences transfer into voting gender gaps.

Keywords

gender gap
Ma's effect
party identification
issue position
candidate evaluation

Abstract

This study examines how the power relationship within households affects individuals' national identity. Comparing with the past studies which address the collective changes of national identity, this study instead focuses on individual households to explore the malleability of individual national identity changed by marriages. Family power studies have shown that the socioeconomic-resource and gender role differences have great impact upon the power distribution among husbands and wives, this study applies the 1996-2008 cross-sectional data to explore the effect of the gender power within households on individuals' national identity. The results of this investigation show that, individuals' national identity is affected by their spouses' ethnic groupings, and women are more likely than men to be affected by their spouses'. The models show that, on the male part, their identity on Taiwanese/Chinese and pro-independence/unification are significantly affected by their own ethnic backgrounds, party identification, and the year of investigation, these factors also affect women's national identities. However, in contrast to men, women's identity on Taiwanese/ Chinese and pro-independence/unification are greatly affected by their spouses' ethnicities. In terms of the Taiwanese/Chinese identity, women are directly affected by their husbands' ethnicities, regardless of their differences in socio-economic status or political engagements. Relatively, in terms of the pro-independence/unification identity, women are indirectly affected by their husbands' ethnic backgrounds caused by the educational gap. As the wives' education level gets lower, their pro-independence/unification stance is more likely to be affected by their husbands' ethnicities. In short, the gender asymmetries of which wives' identity affected by their husbands' ethnicities are not fixed, rather they are distributed differently across households and varied by identity dimensions.

Keywords

national identity
ethnic identity
national choice
marriage
gender power

Abstract

In 2008 presidential election, Taiwan for the first time appeared a significant gender gap in voting; in 2012 presidential election, the first female presidential candidate arose to challenge the incumbent. To compare the changes between these two elections, this study uses ”Taiwan's Election and Democratization Study (TEDS)” panel data (2008P-2012) to observe the stability/change and the patterns of gender gap among the same set of voters. The analysis shows that women voters are more likely than men to change their votes from the KMT candidate to the DPP candidate. The transferring pattern of women voters accounts for the shrink of the voting gender gap comparing to the last election. In terms of the explanation for the voting change, we compare three factors, the party identification, candidate evaluation and issue effect. All of these three factors affect voting decisions to different extent, but in explaining gender difference of the voting change, only the candidate factor is significant. Voting change is mainly due to the female voters with stable party identification, transferring their votes from the KMT to DPP candidate. Among those female voters, some of them are stable DPP supporters who voted for Ma in the 2008 election and returned to vote for DPP candidate Tsai, and still some are stable KMT supporters who cross their party line to vote for their preferred DPP candidate Tsai. Comparing these two presidential elections with panel data, we can conclude that men are more likely to stick to their party identification in casting their ballots, whereas women are more likely to be influenced by other factors besides party identification. And this time, the other factor is the candidate. For those female voters who give the DPP candidate higher evaluation, voting transfer is a natural result.

Keywords

gender gap
female presidential candidate
party identification
candidate factor
issue voting

Abstract

Most of the studies indicate that one of the advantages for social capital is it can stimulate democratic development. At the individual level, one's political interest, political knowledge and citizen skill can be brought up through participating in the communities. However, there is no consensus on whether women use their social capital in the same way as men. This study thus attempts to focus on the relationship between community participation and political engagement for the gendering social capital in Taiwan. With the empirical data analysis used in this study, we have two findings as the follows. First, regardless of the gender, people who involve in a community will engage more positively in civic and traditional political activities. Secondly, by classifying the observations according to the social status (high/ low) and their main living area (public/private sphere), we found that people, except those who have high social status and live in the public sphere, will have the same pattern of spending social capital in political engagement when they possess the same social status and have the same main living area. In other words, gender is not the main explanation of the difference in using social capital within the traditional political engagement.

Keywords

social capital
community participation
gender division
political engagement
civic engagement

Abstract

This paper aims to study the gender difference on political knowledge from a measurement perspective. It asks if the gender difference becomes smaller when the questionnaires are more related to female essentials, and it further examines the factors that lead to gender difference. By using survey data from the TEDS2013, this paper breaks down the concept of political knowledge into three categories: knowledge of female politicians, knowledge of political institutions, and overall political knowledge. Based on the results from multiple regression models, the findings are clear that males have a better political knowledge than females in general. Females, however, demonstrated a better performance on the knowledge of female politicians. This shows an increasingly clear pattern of female political knowledge when the questionnaires are more closely associated with female essentials. The factors that lead to gender differences include the level of education, exposure to newspapers, political interest, marital status, and the degree of satisfaction with the president’s performance. People with a higher level of education, with more exposure to newspapers, with a greater degree of political interest, those who are married, and express less satisfaction with the president’s performance display higher political knowledge.

Keywords

political knowledge of female politicians
political knowledge of institutions
political knowledge
gender difference