International Workshop on "Women and Science / Technology" Network in Asia

Is Gender Speakable in the Community of Physics in Taiwan?

For the last decade, women's participation in physcis in Taiwan appears between 8%-16% at various academic levels in higher education. This may result from gendered participation in earlier stages and broader contexts of education in the country.
In post-secondary education in a ten-year rough average, women's percentages drop from 55% for university colleges, to 50% for universities, to 34% for master's programs, and to 24% for doctoral programs (slide 3, s3). The higher the educational levels, the fewer the women. Women still consist the vast majority 98% of teaching staff at the pre-school level while the percentage drops to 33% as the level raises to univeristy level (s4-5). Women's educational calibre is valued more at lower level as caring capacity and valued less at higer level as professionality. When students' participation is devided into Humanities, Social Sciences, and Science-Technologies (ScT) related fields, the past ten yeas saw an increase from 43% to 50% for ScT at the university level, a decrease from 60% to 47% at the master's programs, and the doctoral level remains 70-71% (s6-8). Apparently easier accesses to higer education cluster in science and technology related fields in Taiwan. If we consider the facts that women still occupy roughly 55%-75% of Humanities students and men 65%-75% of ScT studetns (s9), we can conculde that men in ScT are given easier accesses and more resources in higer education.
In the field of physics, from 1998 to 2005, there are slight increases of women's percentages at faculty level (8%-11%) and doctoral level (9%-11%), and decreases at master's level (18%-16%) and undergraduate level (16%-13%) (s10-11). While reasons for the derecases are yet to be discovered, contributions to the increases may have to do with efforts of the Working Group on Women in Physics (WGWIP) in Taiwan. The Group was establised since 2000 (s12-13). Their 2001 survey on women physicists indicates that 2/3 of the women physicists are not married, and 2/3 of the married ones do not have children, and 2/3 of the survey subjects consider the situation of women in physics in Taiwan needs to be improved (s14-15). The Group has since outreached to female graduate students and other women scientists to establish networks for supports and connections. The Group also efforted to attending international conferences, hosting local symposia, and producing a film portraiting career women in physcis (s16-18). Recently, part of the concen has turned to gender equity issues of resource distribution by Taiwan's National Science Council (NSC), the major institute for research granting affairs. In the five years from 2001 to 2005, women's overall approval rates of NSC grants are consistently lower than men's, while the principle investigators (PIs) in physics are only 6.4% women in 2005 (s19-21). The Group proposes that more work needs to be done to improve women's participation and status in physics in Taiwan (s22).
In addition to the numbers, gender culture is one of the key issues for the improvement. The Group is facing callenges from various sources. Understandings of whether gender issues are legitimate and how they should be appoached are necessary for the work to follow. Sheer increase of numbers does not guarantee increase of rights if the gender culture of physics remain unchallenged (s23-24).

[DOWNLOAD]

• 詳細の報告書 "Is Gender Speakable in the Community of Physics in Taiwan?" のダウンロード(PDFファイル）はこちらから


• Download the full report of "Is Gender Speakable in the Community of Physics in Taiwan?" as a PDF file