Institutionalising gender equity on campuses: mapping patriarchal ruling relations surrounding the gender equity education act in Taiwan

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Confucian patriarchy
• gender equity
• gender equity education Act
• institutional ethnography
• institutional realities
• SGBV on campuses

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.

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by Ministry of Science and Technology, R.O.C. (Taiwan) under grant 104-2410-H-020 -009 -.