The happiness of a woman | Childbirth is a duty of the state, not just a woman's.

This year, the 30-year-old friend C, just quit work in New York, with her husband back to Taiwan. Before that, her life path is almost all parents heart ideal daughter should look like: first voluntary education, successfully applied to the United States prestigious Institute, after graduation in New York a famous company work, where meet the same excellent husband.

A few years later, the husband decided to go back to Taiwan to take over the family business, and she also returned home together, and planned to have children at the age of 30 when they said they were doing well.

At college she used to laugh and tell me that she would have a dozen children, she had an ideal family picture, work, get married, have children, a beautiful garden, a basketball team of children. All along, her life has been steadily moving towards the ideal vision, not too much apprehension or anxiety, indeed got a beautiful degree, work, and marriage. (Recommended reading:"sex live" sea Moss bear x psychologist: Motherly love built, take into account all, why women so tired? )

She returned to Taiwan three months later, we meet to eat, her face appeared a rare puzzled look.

"I was suddenly unsure whether to have a baby so soon. "c told me," Back in Taiwan, I suddenly felt that it would not be easy to return to the workplace and find a job that was as good and reusable as it was before the baby was born. " 」

C's confession Let me very surprised, in all friends of the most determined to have children, but also felt the reality of resistance, and make the woman Superman she felt difficult and hesitant.

In fact, C is feeling a real state of reality and problems, it is not just a worry.

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In Taiwan Society, women have to give birth to children and not women time

According to the latest data from the executive Courtyard 2017, Taiwan women aged 25 to 29 have a Lauzen rate of up to 90%, but the female 30-year-old has a marked decline in labor participation rate, about 14% less than men.

It is also surprising that Taiwan often prides itself on being the most gender-equal country in Asia, however, according to the main office of the Executive Yuan and the ILO survey, China's labor participation rate after 30 years of age is gradually reduced, similar to Singapore, Japan and South Korea 35-44-year-old female labor participation rate gradually rise, the curve is M-type, showing that women have two degrees of employment of the dumping. After the age of 30, the labor participation rate remained between 80% and 70%, and after the age of 60, the labor participation rate was lower than 60%.

Is Taiwan really gender-equal? Perhaps explicit verbal discrimination or ridicule is not as obvious as other countries in East Asia, but there are still structural marital discrimination and gender exclusion in the workplace. For example, women or men who temporarily leave their children in the workplace, from the state system to the private sector, have a very unfriendly attitude towards the marriage plan for workers.

In Taiwan, the Labor Standards Law has a maternity leave of only eight weeks (before and after childbirth, with cases of holidays), and there are conditions in which only 100% of those who have been employed for more than six months are eligible, and only 50% per cent of persons under six months of age are available. That is, if you work for a new company after four months of pregnancy, you have only four weeks to recover after childbirth, including after birth.

As for the six-month post-natal maternity leave, the current beneficiary population is only about 18.7%, the main beneficiary group is the public unit, of which 6.7% is male and 12% is female, and there are few cases of parental leave in the workplace. The dilemma of parental leave includes: The job may not be insured, the insured pay is generally lower than the actual salary (even some small companies do not Lau Jianbao), the appointment of staff is easy to be dismissed directly, change jobs after a year to take parental leave. (Recommended reading: from the position of women in the workplace, to see how far Japan's gender equality of the road to the distance )

The country has to have women to have children and not to give women time to have children. Female body is not a machine, having children is a great burden to the body, we almost forget that the birth of a child so far for pregnant women, there is still the risk of death. And the child is not born a second immediately stand up to walk to find something to eat, the human baby can not live on their own, need to take care of the whole time, this responsibility for care fell on who?

When quitting the workplace becomes the least resistance to the road

According to the 2016 statistics of the Executive Yuan, the average daily unpaid care time for women with spouses (care for children, the elderly, other family members, housework) is nearly four hours, and the husband is only 1.13 hours.

In a generally low wage environment in Taiwan, the situation is even more severe for young women. Prices gradually rising, want to appoint outside the less than, before the three, the average cost of the external support is 16,007 yuan, the average monthly fee of the child before 3 to 6 less than is lower than 8,719 yuan. During this period, childcare is approaching 20,003 per month, and in Taiwan, which has an average salary of about 40,000, having children is not only financially, but also an unbearable burden for young people who have a major bearing, and is equally difficult to bear in labour and time.

Family income is the best earner, after having children, women not only to quickly return to work in the workplace, after eight hours of work in the workplace, there are four hours of care and housework waiting for you, average work 12 hours a day, Taiwan women face serious overwork situation.

But who has the means to maintain a 12-hour working condition for a long time?

After marrying and having children, many Taiwanese women who are expected to take on domestic work must make a seemingly "independent" choice: quit the workplace. In fact, this is due to the situation of serious gender inequality, from the state, down to the Enterprise and the family unit, to the cost of childbirth and care to women, look forward to through women's autonomy "overtime", or the choice of working families to solve, the situation of women's long-term structural neglect. (Recommended reading:"Women's Happiness" 2018 survey Report: Taiwan's women's rights too sheng? One-third women in the workplace are subject to differential treatment )

Under the lack of adequate policy support, single mothers are much more stressed. In the Happiness of Women Fans Survey, single mothers are the most important "economic income" group (95%),. And single mothers also generally respond to the problem of too much work, a majority of all think that adequate rest time (54%), is a necessary condition for happy work.

Writing here, I think of some of the things that Japanese friends in Taiwan told me before they left Taiwan. "Taiwan is really good, if you can, I really hope that the whole world is Taiwan." However, the low salary problem in Taiwan is too sorry for the young people. Here, I really don't know how to live. 」

It is fundamentally difficult to solve the problem of "personal choice", which is attributable to young women not having children, ignoring young people's low pay and ignoring the various costs of female fertility. For more than 2018 years, it is not the state's solution to keep women out of the workforce or to continue to overwork women.