Barriers to female education in Taiwan

A first step in describing a social barrier is to identify that one exists. Statistics collected by the Japanese colonial government and the government of the Republic of China show that Taiwanese girls attended school in far smaller numbers than boys throughout the first half of the 20^th century but do not themselves provide an explanation. In order to demonstrate that a barrier exists, it is necessary to discount competing alternative explanations such as demographics or gender-based differences in ability.

Spohr’s study (Spohr, 2003) of the labour economics of the reform provides evidence of a gender bias in education enrolments by demonstrating that the ratio of girls to boys in the overall population was far more evenly-balanced than it was in the overall school population prior to 1968. His analysis shows that the proportion of female births throughout the period was normal and could not explain their lack of

representation in education by a simple lack of girls to educate. Similarly, he shows that girls did not experience significantly higher mortality rates than boys, so their limited numbers in JHS could not be explained by a spike in female child deaths

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between graduating elementary school and entering JHS. He also provides both illuminating analysis of the subsequent effects of the education expansion of 1968 as well as evidence that even after retrocession, girls received fewer years of formal education than boys in Taiwan.

Lavy’s study (Lavy, 2012) produces a potential explanation: females often

underperform in competitive situations, particularly when placed in direct competition with males. When completing a set of tasks, Lavy’s female subjects were able to perform on a par with the males when the tasks were presented in single-sex or non-competitive environments. Those same subjects, when placed in direct competition with each other or with the male participants, showed a notable decrease in

performance relative to their previous level. Lavy’s findings could be interpreted as meaning that Taiwan’s girls were simply outperformed in the critical entrance exams during the period when entry to JHS was still selective and non-compulsory, and that the NYCEP simply removed this obstacle. However, a subsequent study by De Paola et al. (2015) shows that females who are accustomed to competitive environments show no such symptoms of nerves and perform equally well to their male counterparts in competitive and non-competitive environments, whether single-sex or

co-educational. Inferring from these two studies, women who are subject to social perceptions of gender role can self-limit their competitive performance in order to conform to a social expectation that women are subordinate to men, but once those expectations are removed or no longer have an effect, there is no difference in intellectual performance resulting from gender.

Wolf (1972) describes the way in which aspects of traditional Taiwanese society acted as disincentives to female participation in education and indeed other facets of society outside the home. Her discussions of anthropological observation in Taiwan through

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the 1950s and 1960s show a society in which a gender bias was institutionalised and where limited family resources were expended on the education and career

advancement of male children while girls and women were rarely afforded similar opportunities. In this society, the choice families faced was normally that between educating boys and educating girls and universally came down in favour of boys.

Indeed, even on those happy circumstances where resources exceeded those required for the basic male education, the choice between educating girls and educating boys some more predominantly favoured the male children.

Kubow and Fossum (2007) provide a thoughtful insight into the societal issues surrounding access to education. In particular, their discussion of the ways in which the motivations for a state to expand educational access and the limitations on its ability/will to do so are demonstrations of, “the compromises that cultures make as they confront larger value-driven issues” (Kubow & Fossum, 2007, p. 126) sheds light on the dilemmas facing developing nations. In Taiwan’s case, the desire to drive economic development through creating a larger, more highly-educated industrial labour force was in direct competition with traditional ideas of social status and family harmony which had previously obstructed women’s paths to education.

Overcoming these barriers represented a compromise between the state’s vision for the future and society’s expectations of the present.

Fagerlind and Saha (1989) provide a timeless analysis of the personal and societal factors which accompany the use of education as a tool for national development. In particular, they identify the “personal costs to individuals from continued

participation in in the school system” (Fagerlind & Saha, 1989, p. 80) at

non-compulsory levels, which in the context of Taiwan in the 1960s and 1970s consisted of financial costs to families struggling to fund more than one child’s education; in the

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loss of security in retirement resulting from failing to educate sons as well as their means would allow; and the opportunity costs to individual women who were expected to marry early and produce heirs for their husbands’ families. These cumulative costs served to deter females more than males from continuing their educations beyond the basic mandatory level.