ABSTRACT
Feminist scholars and activists have been lobbying for legislation against sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in Taiwan since the 1980s, which has resulted in many laws being enacted or modified from the 1990s to the 2000s. The Gender Equity Education Act (GEEA) provides a code of practice to address SGBV on campuses that has been implemented for more than a decade. This study used Institutional Ethnography to explore the ruling relations surrounding the institution of the GEEA in universities. Beginning from the standpoint of the case coordinators, this research expands from frontline workers’ experiential accounts to the institutional realities ruled by universities’ local administrative systems. Contrary to feminist commendation for merging gender equity into patriarchal campus systems through legislation, this article explicates how the administrative system subordinates SGBV experiences and frontline workers’ knowledge to a modernised form of Confucian patriarchy.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Pei-Ru Liao is currently deploying Institutional Ethnography as a research framework to study the implementation of gender equity related laws in contemporary Taiwan. She is also interested in the correlation between religious right and gender equity in a global context.