Number of women in poverty surges

TOUGH BATTLE:
Aside from the gender wage gap, gender stereotypes also lead to women having to shoulder most of the childcare and household responsibilities

• By Chiu Chih-jou and William Hetherington / Staff reporter, with staff writer

The number of women in Taiwan living near or below the poverty line has increased by 20,000 over the past 10 years, with about one-third of those being single mothers, a Ministry of Health and Welfare report showed.

Ten years ago, the primary earners of two-thirds of low and lower-middle-income households in Taiwan were men, but the trend over the past decade has shown a growing percentage of households where women were the primary earners, the report showed.

There were 91,000 female-headed households living near or below the poverty line in 2013, accounting for 37.6 percent of all households in that income bracket. By 2023, that number had risen to 110,000, or 43.98 percent.

Photo: CNA

Many impoverished women in Taiwan are in their 40s or 50s, who often care for elderly parents or children in the evenings after working full-time during the day, the ministry said.

Among female-headed households in this category, 27.8 percent are single-parent families with children younger than 18, it added.

The “feminization of poverty” first gained academic attention in the US during the 1980s amid rising divorce rates and births outside of marriage — factors which place single mothers at greater risk of falling into a cycle of poverty, Soochow University Department of Social Work professor Hung Hui-fen (洪惠芬) said yesterday.

The core issue behind single mothers’ poverty is the high cost of raising children, she said.

“I once interviewed a single mother working as a legal adviser at a major financial holding company — someone whose income was in the top 20 percent in Taiwan at the time,” she said.

“However, despite her income, following her divorce, she had to take on additional work to maintain the equivalent of a dual-income lifestyle for her child, as the child’s father did not provide stable financial support,” she added.

Moreover, many women choose to leave the workforce during pregnancy or after childbirth, which disrupts their employment during marriage and worsens their financial situation after divorce, leading to a domino effect, she said.

The gender wage gap and traditional patriarchal beliefs in Taiwan also often result in divorced women receiving less support from their families, making their situations even more difficult, she added.

“However, Taiwan’s wave of growing female poverty is not solely due to changes in family structure. For example, the weakness of the pension system means many elderly women are not adequately protected,” she said.

Social and Family Affairs acting director Chou Tao-chun (周道君) echoed Hung’s statements, saying that persisting social values and gender stereotypes cause women to shoulder most childcare and household responsibilities, leading to career disruptions and other difficulties.

To alleviate family burdens, the government is promoting new childcare policies for children up to the age of six, he said, adding that the policies would increase childcare subsidies and provide more affordable childcare options to help families.

Currently, only about 2 percent of the population qualifies as “poor,” but a more realistic threshold would be 6 percent, a member of an advocacy group said on condition of anonymity.

“We urge legal amendments to broaden protections for the truly economically disadvantaged, improve translation services and other mechanisms for minority groups to ensure unimpeded access to welfare, and bolster childcare support systems,” they said.

Additional reporting by Rachel Lin

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