Op-Ed | One-Third Is Not a Ceiling, "It Is a Floor": The Gender Reality of Taiwan's Cabinet

In August 2025, the premier initiated a Cabinet reshuffle. Of the 16 incoming Cabinet officials, only two were women, reflecting a severe gender imbalance and the continued underrepresentation of women at the decision-making level. In fact, in February 2025, legislators Fan Yun and Huang Jie proposed adding Article 12-1 to the Organizational Act of the Executive Yuan to address the gender imbalance in the Cabinet. The draft amendment would require that, among political appointees heading ministries, councils, directorates-general, agencies, and independent agencies under the Executive Yuan, as well as ministers without portfolio, presidents, vice presidents, secretaries-general, and spokespersons, no gender may account for less than one-third.

Amending the Law Is Not Just About Making the Cabinet “A Little More Balanced”—It Is About Facing Reality

At the core of this proposed amendment is the institutional protection of women’s equal participation at the highest levels of government decision-making, in line with the requirements of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the principle of gender equality within Taiwan’s administrative system.

What is CEDAW? The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1979 and entered into force in 1981. It is often described as an “international bill of rights for women.”

The Convention expressly requires States parties to adopt legislative and administrative measures to eliminate discrimination against women in political, economic, social, educational, family, and other spheres, and to ensure that women and men enjoy all fundamental human rights on an equal basis.

Although Taiwan is not a member of the United Nations, the Executive Yuan submitted the proposal to accede to CEDAW to the Legislative Yuan in 2006. The Legislative Yuan approved Taiwan’s accession in 2007, and the president signed and issued the instrument of accession that same year. To give the Convention domestic legal effect, the Executive Yuan proposed the draft Enforcement Act of Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in 2010. The Act passed its third reading in 2011 and entered into force in 2012, establishing the legal foundation for bringing Taiwan’s gender-equality framework into line with international standards.

According to CEDAW General Recommendation No. 23: Political and Public Life, States parties should ensure that women participate in political and public life on an equal basis with men, including through the rights to vote and stand for election, to participate in the formulation and implementation of government policy, and to take part in non-governmental organizations and associations concerned with the public and political life of the country.

The recommendation also notes that research shows women’s participation begins to have a real impact on political style and the substance of decision-making when it reaches 30 to 35 percent, often referred to as a “critical mass.” Going further, CEDAW General Recommendation No. 40 (2024) on the Equal and Inclusive Representation of Women in Decision-Making Systems expressly advances 50:50 parity, emphasizing States parties’ obligation to achieve women’s equal access to, and equal power within, decision-making systems across political, public, economic, and digital spheres, while removing institutional and cultural barriers to genuinely balanced participation.

In Taiwan, women’s political participation has made significant progress. Women currently account for 41 percent of legislators, 56.3 percent of county and city mayors, 36 percent of county and city councilors, and as much as 60.7 percent of Legislative Yuan staff, demonstrating substantial progress toward gender balance in the legislative sphere.

By contrast, the Executive Yuan system clearly lags behind. Women currently account for only 21.1 percent of politically appointed heads of agencies under the Executive Yuan, while men account for 78.9 percent. In addition, women made up only 38 percent of senior-grade civil servants in 2021. Structural inequality therefore remains.

This disparity is not merely a matter of numbers; it is a disparity in power and perspective. When major policies continue to be decided primarily by teams composed overwhelmingly of one gender, diverse social experiences are naturally excluded from the decision-making process.

For this reason, the amendment proposed by Fan Yun and Huang Jie is not merely intended to make the Cabinet look “a little more balanced.” It is an attempt to face reality, and the author supports it. When women account for only about one-fifth of the administrative decision-making level, the structure of power remains skewed.

Scholars have also argued that no single gender should account for more than two-thirds of decision-making positions. Such an approach can move beyond a mainstream cisgender binary model, recognize the existence of transgender and intersex people, and reduce the false perception of competition for resources between cisgender women and transgender women. In other words, the one-third threshold in the current draft should not be treated as the goal, but as the minimum. The government should more actively strengthen the training and promotion of women in the civil service to ensure that meeting the gender ratio does not become a mere formality.

The author further recommends that the Executive Yuan regularly review the gender composition of each ministry and agency and the extent of participation in decision-making, so as to ensure effective implementation and continued improvement. Taiwan can thereby move toward the 50:50 standard advocated in CEDAW General Recommendation No. 40 (2024) on the Equal and Inclusive Representation of Women in Decision-Making Systems and become one of Asia’s most inclusive and human-rights-conscious democracies.

＊This article was published in ETtoday Forum on October 28, 2025.