Are Gender Politics Renovating or Submitting?

• In Event: Social Movements, Technology, and Political Participation

Abstract

Are Gender Politics Renovating or Submitting?
--A Comparison of Institutional Changes Prompted by the #MeToo Movement in Taiwan and China

Building off of previous research conducted between 2022 to 2023, this study aims to examine how Taiwan and China—two patriarchal societies both deeply influenced by Confucianism—have undergone institutional changes under the #MeToo movement as a result of negotiations and confrontations between the state and gendered civil society and, thereby, analyze the resulting impact on regime maintenance in both democratic and authoritarian contexts.

The #MeToo movement in China began on 01 January 2018 when Luo Chien-chien, a female Ph.D. student at Beihang University, openly stated her thesis advisor and prestigious chair professor, Chen Xiaowu, had repeatedly molested female students. This set off a chain of events with the #MeToo movement spreading to bring down college professors, public figures, Buddhist masters, and even a national broadcast news personality at CCTV.

In contrast, the #MeToo movement in Taiwan was ignited by a Facebook post from 31 May 2023 written by a former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) staffer. The post in question described an instance of being sexually harassed at a work event and how the female supervisor the staffer reported to advised her to retract her complaint. This incident marked the beginning of Taiwanese society being rocked by waves of sexual harassment and assault allegations against doctors, professors, umpires, and YouTubers.

This study will look at the #MeToo movements in Taiwan and China to examine how gender movements and the state have competed for the right to define gender violence through the use of social media platforms and, in light of such confrontations, what sort of public spaces for gender politics have emerged as a result. Additionally, this study further probes these new public spaces to look at any resulting government mechanisms or institutions, such as the new institution in China and institutional reforms in Taiwan, and analyze the gendered effects of such institutional changes. Lastly, this study aims to uncover if the post-#MeToo institutional reforms are acting to renovate gender politics in the face of regime maintenance or if these reforms are limited by the state and patriarchy to conform with existing governance frameworks.

This research will examine these questions by assessing the role of social media within the context of political opportunity structure and using feminist institutional theory as a basis for analysis. Interviews will be conducted with 40 #MeToo movement victims; 40 gender activists; and 25 legislation scholars, experts and representatives living in Taiwan, China, and the eastern United States, each of whom will be interviewed more than twice.

Ultimately, this research aims to present a comparison of how gender movements in both democratic and authoritarian regimes serve to challenge governance strategies. By incorporating the variable of patriarchal society into discussions of the changing relationship between the state and gender movements, this study will allow for further dialogue within Western gender political theory. Moreover, by analyzing the theory of social network movements within a political opportunity structure, this study hopes to illuminate the dynamic cooperation and confrontation of the internal and external actors behind institutional changes in Taiwan and China.

Author

• Weiting Wu, Shih Hsin University