Chin-Fen Chang

The Employment Discontinuity of Married Women in Taiwan: Job Status, Ethnic Background and Motherhood

This article studies the determination of married women’s employment discontinuity in Taiwan. Many studies have demonstrated that a high proportion of married women leave their jobs because of marriage, pregnancy, or childbirth (MPB). This article suggests the concept of labour market segmentation be brought back into the study of women’s employment stability. Using nationwide sampling data from the 2001 Taiwan Social Change Survey, the article analyses how job status and sociocultural factors affect women’s various decisions to quit their job. By using multinomial logistic analysis of over 900 married women, the author discovers that job status of both wives and husbands, husbands’ ethnic background and gender-role attitudes have significant impacts on women’s reasons to quit. Labour market segmentation by gender significantly affects the employment stability of married women. The results indicate a complex decision-making process when married women struggle to hold onto their jobs in this East Asian society.

China-Bound for Jobs? The Influences of Social Connections and Ethnic Politics in Taiwan

Taiwan has long been recognized as a labour-absorbing society, but today approximately 3 per cent of its population is working in China, an increasingly important destination for regional immigration. In this article we go beyond conventional immigration economics to examine how social connections and ethnic politics affect Taiwanese motivations to move to China for employment. Results from a national random-sample survey conducted in 2005 are used to analyse the willingness and potentiality of Taiwanese to work in China. The findings indicate that besides human capital factors, social networks and political/ethnic identity offer insights to understanding migrations among Taiwanese, as well as why the vast majority have so little interest in going China-bound. Taiwan is conventionally described as a labour absorbing society,1 with the accumulated number of unskilled labourers entering from South-East Asia estimated at approximately 365,000 in 2008.2 Today it is increasingly recognized as a labour sending society, with at least 3 per cent of its population of 23 million currently working in China3 – in other words, the number of workers leaving Taiwan * National Taipei University. Email: mtsai@mail.ntpu.edu.tw † Academia Sinica. Email: chinfen@gate.sinica.edu.tw 1 Graeme Hugo, “International migration in the Asian-Pacific region: emerging trends and issues,” in Douglas S. Massey and J. Edward Taylor (eds.), International Migration: Prospects and Policies in a Global Market (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 77–103; Graeme Hugo and Charles Stahl, “Labour export strategies in Asia,” in ibid. pp. 174–200; Douglas Massey, Joaquín Arango, Graeme Hugo, Ali Kouaouchi, Adela Pellegrino and J. Edward Taylor, World in Motion: Understanding International Migration at the End of the Millennium (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998); Charles W. Stahl, “International labour migration in East Asia: trends and policy issues,” in Robyn Iredale, Charles Hawksley and Stephen Castles (eds.), Migration in the Asian Pacific: Population, Settlement and Citizenship Issues (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2003), pp. 29–54. 2 Laodong tongji yuebao (Labour Statistics Monthly Bulletin) (Taipei: Council of Labour Affairs, Republic of China, March 2009), p. 156. 3 This 2005 estimate is from the Straits Exchange Foundation, a semi-governmental agency that represents Taiwan in negotiations with the Chinese government. See http://www.seftb.org/mhypage.exe? HYPAGE=news_old_content.asp&idx=175, accessed 18 August 2008. Other estimates of this group vary, however, ranging between 750 thousand and one million. See Ming-Chang Tsai and Rueyling 639

Economic Segmentation in Taiwan: A Comparative Study with the United States

Abstract We test the applicability of dual economy theory in the peripheral country of Taiwan. Based on factor and regression analyses of industry level data, we find that Taiwans economic structure cannot be divided into two distinct sectors as the strictest form of dual economy theory suggests. Instead, the structure is multidimensional, characterized by dimensions such as capital intensity and concentration, economic scale and firm size, profits, and state control. Several of these dimensions, especially earnings, affect work outcomes, and these effects are not generally mediated by the occupational structure. When these findings are compared with those from a similar study of the United States, we find that the structure of economic segmentation and relationships between economic structure and work outcomes are simpler in Taiwan, as would be expected given Taiwans less developed economy. Thus, the findings demonstrate the usefulness of concepts underlying segmentation perspectives for understanding ...

Qui s’intéresse aux syndicats ?. Opinion et syndicats à Taiwan (1995-2005)

Cet article analyse l’evolution de l’opinion publique taiwanaise a l’egard des syndicats, en cherchant plus particulierement a determiner quels sont les groupes de population favorables a une plus forte syndicalisation. Nous comparons tout d’abord l’evolution de cette opinion a travers les dynamiques macro-economiques et politiques. A partir de quatre enquetes sur le changement social a Taiwan, realisees entre 1995 et 2005, nous analysons ensuite les effets directs de quatre variables independantes (le sexe, l’âge, l’appartenance ethnique et le niveau d’education) au niveau individuel ou collectif, a court ou long terme. Nous montrons une augmentation des attentes, entre 2000 et 2005, pour une syndicalisation plus forte, ce qui revele une conscience accrue du role des syndicats dans les relations de travail, en particulier dans un contexte de crise economique ou de ralentissement de la croissance.