Keywords

8.1 Introduction

Women’s movement has a long history in the process of Taiwan’s social and political development. It has her first wave movement in the early twentieth century during the Japanese occupation period. (Yang 1993) The current phase of the women’s movement was developed from the New Women Movement which was derived from the women’s liberation movement in the early 1970s in the US. Although it was claimed by some scholars as an indigenous movement grown out of Taiwan’s experience (Lu 1972; 1994), others viewed it as part of the second wave global feminist project. (Wang 1999) Among the many distinguishing features of this second wave women’s movement, the establishment and institutionalization of women’s studies program in higher education, which started in the early 1970s in the United States, was considered by many as one of the most defining and significant characteristics. For not only was it once viewed as “the academic wing of the women’s liberation movement,” (Gordon 1975: 565) but through its relationship to the movement, women’s studies have significantly shaped the development of feminist knowledge system within the academic. This, in turn, has led to the curriculum reform in higher education which becomes a major women’s movement itself (Stimpson 1973).

Although the publication of “New Feminism” (Xin Nyu Xing Zhu Yi) by Annette Lu in 1972 was identified by feminist scholars and activists as sowing the seed of the contemporary phase of women’s movement in Taiwan, the development of women’s studies courses for the purpose of disseminating knowledge about women and for women would not be available until the establishment of “Women’s Research Program” in National Taiwan University in 1985. This is a delay of more than a decade after the initiation of the “New Women Movement” in 1972, due to the authoritarian political atmosphere resulted from the implementation of martial law in Taiwan from 1949 to 1987. Despite its late start, the development of women’s studies and, likewise, women’s movement in Taiwan has been impressive among Asian societies. Over the past 30 years, women movement and women’s studies program in Taiwan have come a long way. Women Studies has been expanded and renamed Gender Studies. Currently, there is a total of 11 such programs: three gender studies graduate institutes offering MA and PhD degrees and seven interdisciplinary gender/women’s studies programs. These serve as platforms for integrating faculty from various disciplines to promote and offer courses on women and gender in all universities. There is also a total of 549 courses related to the subjects of sex, sexuality, and gender listed in the curricula of 65 schools among the total of 168 higher education institutions in Taiwan in 2008. (MOE 2009a, b).

In view of the importance of the feminist reform of curriculum for the contemporary women’s liberation movement to achieve gender equality, and yet there has been no systematic investigation of its development in Taiwan available, this chapter thus attempts to analyze the developmental process of women’s and gender studies in higher education as a reflection of women’s movement in Taiwan. It will also try to identify the actors shaping up the unique path to engender Taiwanese higher education in Taiwan and emphasize its relationship to the political democratization in general and women’s movement in particular.

8.2 Literature Review

Feminist transformation of higher education involves attempts and efforts in at least two fronts: feminist teaching and pedagogy and feminist transformation of knowledge. As claimed by the women’s movement, feminist epistemology calls for new ways of constructing knowledge of society based on women’s experiences and viewing women as the subject of knowledge production. Feminist critiques of male dominant (malestream) knowledge construction challenge the neutrality of scientific knowledge and the concepts of objectivity and value free from the traditional empirical science. Feminist methodology proposes feminist standpoint approach; that is, women, by being the oppressed group in patriarchal society where gender is the basic category of social division, behold the privileged position in the delineation of the ruling relationship and operation of power in their daily lives; and thus, knowledge constructed on the basis of their experiences should be relevant and empowering to the liberation of the underclass (Harding 1987; Hartsock 1987; Smith 1987a).

Literature review of women’s transformation of knowledge system may be approached from the following two aspects:

8.2.1 Women and Gender Studies Curriculum

For the academic to serve as a wing of women’s movement, curriculum reform or revolution to incorporate feminist teaching and pedagogy was perceived to be even more critical. (De Laurentis 1986; Lougee 1981) Not only historically women studies courses were offered before feminist journals were established, dissemination of feminist ideas and knowledge through small group discussion was a major force behind the “consciousness raising” in the early stage of movement. Teaching women/gender courses through classroom to young generation of women have served as an important mechanism of recruiting continuous support for and new input to sustain the development of the movement. The institutionalization of women studies curriculum in higher education also indicates the integration of feminist knowledge into academic discipline and ensures the acceptance and employment of feminist scholars by the education system. Secure faculty position will then provide a basis for knowledge production for the feminist transformation of education. Therefore, delineation of the path and pattern of how women and gender studies program and courses developed will expand our understanding of the gendering process of Taiwan in the past and indicate its direction in the future. However, systematic investigation of the development of the gendering of curriculum in higher education in Taiwan was limited. This chapter analyzes the developmental procedure of women’s and gender studies curriculum in higher education as a reflection of women’s movement in Taiwan. It will also attempt to hypothesize the factors shaping up the unique path of the engendering of higher education in Taiwan and its relationship to the political democratization in general and women’s movement in particular.

8.2.2 Models of Institutionalization of Feminist Curriculum

Over the past three decades, there had been many heated discussions and debates over the nature, structure and the goals of women studies program and its relationship to women’s liberation movement among feminist scholars. (see Boxer 1982 for the excellent review; Sheridan 1990) The paths and ways by which women studies developed as an institution had been various and diverse. In general, two major models of institutionalization practiced in the West, especially in the US, may be identified. They were referred to as the integrated and separatist models. An integrated model refers to the ideal situation wherein not only women’s studies or gender-related courses would be implemented as core courses of disciplinary curriculum, but also feminist knowledge would be integrated into the existing courses of the various departments of humanities and social sciences. Thus, for the sociology department, not only sociology of gender would be listed as a core course of sociology curriculum and required for all sociology students, but feminist theories and feminist critiques of traditional sociological theories will also be included in sociological theories courses. Similarly, for other disciplines such as history, anthropology, and literature, not only history of women would be required course, but also feminist reconstruction of history as experienced by women in daily life, i.e., social history would be included in the curriculum, in addition to political history.

In contrast, a separatist model would require the establishment of an independent women/gender studies program or department which will be responsible for designing and offering of courses leading to a major degree or, less preferred, a minor or certificate of women/gender studies. Such an independent department/program would have its autonomy in student recruiting and academic program requirements. Ideally, it will have its own faculty positions and budget allocation, as well as administrative staff. While this is an ideal and preferred model, such an independent women/gender studies department has not been the prevailing model of feminist pedagogy among American universities. Moreover, a separatist department or institution of women studies, due to its small faculty, under funding, and unconventional subject, could have the potential danger of being marginalized and ghettoized by the academic politics within the university.

In short, each model has its benefits as well as its disadvantages, the adoption of a particular model was often dictated by the conjecture of the academic politics of university and the personality of women studies faculty at the time. Many women studies programs went through changes from one model to the other at a different stage of its development. The general trend seems to be in the direction of establishing a separate institution of gender studies as women’s movement gained strength and women’s studies became accepted (Schramm 1977). The most common model turns out to be an interdisciplinary program of women/gender studies consisted of faculty from different departments of humanities and social sciences and offered a combination of minor, major, certificate and/or degree for students interested in gender/women/feminist studies. In the US, there are currently about 700 women/gender/feminist studies programs, departments or research centers based on this model. 1

8.3 Feminist Research in Taiwan

Over all, feminist research of women in Taiwan may be described as from being nonexistent to partially institutionalized over the past 30 years. There have been various reviews of the extent to which women research (funü yanjiu) or gender research (xingbie yanjiu) has grown and the topics and fields on which feminist research has focused among journal publications and graduate theses (Pan et al. 2000; Chang and Wu 2002; Lan 2008; Hwang and Hsieh 2011). Several points regarding the development of women/gender research in Taiwan may be summarized from these studies which are of significance. First, among the humanities and social sciences disciplines, it appears that literature, Western literature in particular, sociology and education are in the lead in producing women and gender-related research. Second, in terms of the path of development, over all, when measured by the number of published papers, women/gender research seems to grow significantly after 1995. But there is a tendency to slow down since 2005, especially for the discipline of literature which reach its peak in 1999. However, in terms of its impact on knowledge transformation, the results were mixed and less encouraging.

For example, using publications in sociology, education, and literature journals, the three leading disciplines in gender and women research, as basis of analysis, it was found that the total number of publications increased from 50 in the period of 1990–94 to 124 in the period of 2004–07, when gender/women research was defined broadly as including the term of women and gender in key words in the articles. This is an increase of more than double in the number of gender/women papers and looks impressive. But, when examined more closely in terms of ratio, the total number of women/gender papers comprised only a small proportion (6.3%) of all the papers published in these journals during the period of 17 years. That is, a total of 451 women/gender papers out of a grand total of 7159 papers published from 1990 to 2007 among the 28 journals reviewed. Indeed, this is not very impressive or encouraging. Furthermore, when feminist research is defined more strictly as analysis of women and gender issues using feminist perspective, the proportion of feminist research was further reduced to only 4.3% (Hwang and Hsieh 2011).

As to the status of women/gender research in specific disciplines, although the discipline of literature published the largest number of women/gender publications, (257 among 9 journals) sociology has the highest percentage (17.5%) of women/gender research accepted for publication among the three selected journals. For the discipline of education, women/gender research appears rather invisible. Among all the reviewed journals of education, women/gender papers comprised only 2.3% of all the publications in 16 journals. (107/4586) In other words, education as a disciple is rather unfriendly and non-receptive to feminist scholarship in Taiwan. The differences in the extent to which “feminist revolution” was attainable among these disciplines were attributed to factors such as dominance of male gatekeepers as compared to the more gender-balanced composition of journal editors; qualitative oriented methodology; and the prevalence of experience in women’s movement among female scholars of the respective disciplines. Among the three disciplines examined, education, due to its dominance of male gatekeeper, quantitative nature of methodology, and low participation in women’s movement among its female scholars, turned out to be the most resistant to feminist research. In contrast, sociology in Taiwan, being more reflective and interpretative oriented and most participatory in social protests among its members, appears to be most friendly, while literature became the moderate host after being the most enthusiastic supporter in the early stage of feminist scholarship development. In short, based on the examination of journal publications the once optimistic expectation of feminists to ultimately transform knowledge production may still have a long way to go. There are “missing feminist revolutions” not only in sociology (as observed in the U.S.) but also in almost all disciplines of humanities and social sciences in Taiwan.

For the field of sociology, while feminism was believed to be important to sociology by being an element of public sociology in the US and women’s studies or gender research was identified as a most visible subfield of ASA (Burawoy 1996; 2004) how did feminist sociology develop and what status has it attained in Taiwan? Using articles published in broadly defined sociological journals as the basis of analysis, Lan (2008) found that there has been an upward and growing trend of women and gender-related publications since the 1980s, with 1995 as the turning point. Compared with the increase from a total of 8 to 16 for the first half period, from 1981 to 1995, the number of sociological articles on women and gender increased substantially after 1995 among sociological journals in Taiwan. The total number of such publications jumped from 16 in the early period of 1991–1995 to 61 for the period of 2001–2005, an almost quadruple increase (Lan 2008, 77). The specific topics which received most research attention included family/marriage, body, work, sex, and sexuality (queer). These are the issues related more to the personal life of women, hence more feminine, as compared to those topics on politics, ethnicity, class, and law which received less attention and are viewed as the more structural and core issues of sociology. That is, less feminine. This gendered division of labor among sociological subfields consequently has lead the author to the rather pessimistic conclusion. “There is (still) a missing revolution in sociology” in Taiwan according to Stacey and Thorne’s US observation in 1985 (Lan 2008). Similarly. other feminist sociologists, after reviewing the representation of women and gender issues in a major sociology textbook of Taiwan society, summed up the status of feminist research in sociology as follows: “The inclusion of women issues in sociology serves, at best, only as a token of good will (of male sociologists). Or, more realistically, it is a masculine way to incorporate feminism by the main (male) stream.” (Tseng et al. 2004: 135).

8.4 Women’s Studies as a Wing of Women’s Movement in Taiwan

To delineate the mapping of Taiwan’s women movement as manifested in the process of gendering of college curriculum, three dimensions may be examined. The first one is the institutionalization of women’s studies programs within academics; the second one is the mainstreaming of women/gender courses, and the third one is the insurrection of feminist knowledge (Sheridan 1990). Transformation of knowledge production and dissemination from the standpoint of women as the dominated group provides women’s movement with the theoretical foundation for liberation but also constitutes the legacy for the contemporary feminist project (Harding 1991; Hartsock 1987; Smith 1987b).

8.4.1 The Institutionalization of Women/Gender Studies Program

Although the publication of New Feminism by Annette (Hsiu-lien) Lu in 1972 was viewed by many scholars as the beginning, “sowing the seeds” as many people like to put it, of the contemporary women’s movement in Taiwan, the movement was not materialized until much later in the early 1980s. The launch of the Awakening magazine (funü xinzhi) in 1982 marked the beginning of the long campaign devoted to the promotion of women’s movement in Taiwan under the Martial Law. The “Awaking” magazine and “Pioneer” publishing house (Tou Fang She) were organized by followers or supporters of Lu after her arrest and imprisonment due to her involvement in the “Kaohsiung Incident” in 1979. It was the first feminist group dedicated to the promotion of women’s consciousness. However, there was no organized effort focused on women’s issues on university campuses until a decade later. The first women research program within the university, Research Program on Women (WRP), was established unofficially in 1985 as a research program under the auspices of the Population Studies Center in National Taiwan University. There was only a total of seven (7) women/gender research programs or centers ever established over the course of last three decades from 1985–2015 (Table 8.1).

Table 8.1 Institutionalization process of women/gender research in higher education in Taiwan, 1988–2014
Full size table

More importantly, in terms of feminist pedagogy, there are currently only four formal graduate institutes offering MA and PhD degrees in gender studies (including one on human sexuality) among all of the higher education institutions in Taiwan. For undergraduate studies, there has not been yet any department offering gender/women studies as a discipline of undergraduate major or BA degree. At most, there has been a total of 12 interdisciplinary programs offering a certificate for undergraduate students who are interested in gender/women/sexuality studies by providing courses through various departments of humanities or social sciences (Table 8.2). The one exception is the gender studies program which was approved and listed officially as a minor by the Interdisciplinary Program of Humanities and Social Sciences of National Tsing Hua University in 2002. At present, the total number of universities which have formal interdisciplinary programs offering a certificate for gender/women studies at undergraduate level is still rather limited, only 10 out of the total of 168 universities. Moreover, all of these interdisciplinary teaching programs are available at public universities. For the privately funded university, only two such interdisciplinary programs have been institutionalized in the past for a period of time. Interestingly, these two higher education institutions are founded by religious organizations: one (Tunghai University) by Christian Church, one (Providence University) by Catholic Church. Unfortunately, these two programs are not available any longer.

Table 8.2 Institutionalization Process of Women/Gender Studies Program in Higher Education in Taiwan, 1988–2014
Full size table

Regarding the establishment of these four formal graduate programs of gender studies, one question worthy of asking is: why did these particular universities agree or were approved to set up such a programs? To answer this question, it is interesting to observe the following points. First of all, except the National Kaohsiung Normal University, the other three gender/sex graduate institutes were set up in private-funded universities. None of the major public universities has institutionalized any formal graduate program on gender/women studies. On the other hand, there is one commonality among these four universities with such programs. They are higher education institutions dedicated to the training of professionals for various fields such as teaching, media, and caring and counseling. These are fields which were dominated by woman professionals. While teacher’s college is traditionally under the government supervision and thus public-funded, the other three professionally oriented universities are all private-funded which has fewer restrictions from the Ministry of Education and required only approval from the decision-making body of the university. As long as the university administration may be convinced of the demand for such a program, it may be accepted and implemented. The establishment of the Graduate Institute of Gender Studies in Kaohsiung Medical University may serve as a case for this point. The program was initially set up as a graduate program of the nursing school based on the argument that the main student body of nursing school was women who were the subject of gender studies, and thus justified the need and legitimized the demand for the establishment of such program. A similar argument may have been employed in the case of Institute of Human Sexuality which offered the only graduate program for the study of human sexuality in Taiwan. But, this program emphasizes the study of sexuality from traditional medical perspective and the training of counseling and therapeutic professionals for educational and medical purposes, rather than focused on feminist analysis of sexuality. Finally, about the timing of the promotion of gender studies program to PhD level after 2006, the passing of Gender Equality Education Act in 2004 may be relevant. This law requires schools of all levels not only must set up gender equality committee on campus but also have to develop and offer gender equality courses, including sex education and awareness of female sexual autonomy in the school curriculum. The implementation of this law certainly has the facilitating effect on the demand for teacher’s training in the related topics of gender equality and sexual education, including sexual harassment prevention. This law certainly further facilitate the approval of the PhD program of Graduate Institute of Gender and Education in Kaohsiung Normal University by the Ministry of Education in 2011.

8.4.2 Stages of the Institutionalization Process

In addition to the type or nature of university wherein gender/women studies were offered, there is one other interesting point regarding the trend of development worthy of observing. That is, the process to institutionalize women’s and gender studies centers may be divided into three stages. These three stages of the process of institutionalization were roughly parallel to the stages in the political democratization in Taiwan. The first period, from 1985 to 1994, was around the end of martial law in 1987 and the beginning of democratization when Lee Teng-hui was elected as the first Taiwanese President through direct popular votes in 1996. Only three research programs were established and all of them were funded by outside resources, the Asia Foundation, without or with only minimum support from within university. This period may be called the “sprouting” stage when several research programs, which were unofficial and unfunded organizations, began to emerge in predominately public universities. Most of these programs were set up by groups of young feminist scholars on their own efforts.

The second stage, from 1995 to 1999, was commonly viewed as the “deepening” stage of Taiwan democracy which led eventually to the first transfer of political power from the KMT (Komintung/Nationalist Party) to the DPP (Democratic Progressing Party) in 2000. For the first time in Taiwan, a non-KMT candidate was elected as the president. The DPP became the ruling party in Taiwan from 2000–2008. The political process entered the period of transitional democracy and political atmosphere was more liberal during this period. Representation of women in political decision bodies reached a new height. Not only the Vice President was a woman, who was a veteran women’s movement leader, women also filled about one-third of the cabinet positions. Women’s presence in the political decision process became visible. “Gender parity in governance” (xingbie gongzhi) was declared as a policy goal. These factors may lead to more receptive attitudes among the educational bureaucrats to the feminist call for a more gender supportive environment on campus. This period thus witnessed an accelerating growth or sprouting of such centers, additional 8 centers were established island wide. There was a total of eleven (11) women/gender programs or centers by 2000. This period may be called as the rooting stage of the academic engendering process.

Afterwards, the growth of women/gender research center appeared to suffer a setback. There was no new research center established among universities in Taiwan beyond 2000. On the other hand, there was a wave of establishment of graduate institutes offering MA degree for gender/sexuality as the subject of study since 2000. These graduate institutes were formally approved by the Ministry of Education and funded by the university as MA programs. All four such graduate programs were established in the two years period of 2000 to 2001 and two of the MA programs were expanded to PhD degree afterwards. The Graduate Institute of Gender and Education of Kaohsiung Normal University started its Ph D degree in 2011 while Graduate Institute of Human Sexuality of Shu Te University began its doctorate program in 2006.

The third stage of the institutionalization was characterized by the “formalization” of the gender studies as teaching units and degree-granting programs in higher education. This was a major achievement of feminist efforts toward the goal of institutionalization of gender studies. It signified the official acceptance of gender studies as an academic discipline and feminist knowledge finally gaining a secured footing in the gendering of higher education. The first graduate institute of gender studies approved by the government was named “Gender and Education” in normal university in 2000. It was designated to provide training for high school teachers with specialization in gender and sex issues in preparation for the implementation of Gender Equity Law after 2004. It is worthy of pointing out that this would also be the first and only PhD program on gender studies beginning 2011. Why was there a spur of growth of graduate programs of gender studies in the year of 2000–2001? It may be viewed as government’s responses to social pressure and feminist demand for actions to curb increasing sexual assaults and severe cases of violence against women and girls between 1997 and 2000. Public demand on government actions resulted in the passages of various laws regarding gender equality in education and prevention of sexual violence against women. Among the laws of gender equality, the most important were the following ones: Act of Gender Equality in Employment (2002), Gender Equity Education Act (2004), and Sexual Harassment Act (2009). The passage of these laws reflects the social sentiment regarding the issues of gender injustice and paves the way for the further development of gender equality in the public sphere.

8.4.3 The Sprouting Stage: The Pioneer Women/Gender Institutions

Taiwan was under the authoritarian government from 1949 until the lifting of martial law in 1987. During the long period of 38 years, the freedom and rights granted under the constitution were severely curtailed. All levels of education, including university education, were under the tight control of the government. Not only textbooks have to be approved by the education authority, but also the institutionalization of academic discipline and the naming of the department within the university has to go through a long process of application, review, and approval according to the correctness of political ideology and needs of economic development. Under such conservative sociopolitical atmosphere, and given the negative labeling of women liberation movement then, it was not a small achievement that any women studies organization may be allowed to set up on the university campus. It would require a certain degree of ingenuity and creativity on the part of feminist scholars to get a footing within university bureaucracy. Therefore, for the purpose of understanding the gendering of academy in Taiwan, it may be interesting and informative to give a brief description of the three pioneer institutes (Chen 2005).

The first academic organization devoted to the study of women, Research Program of Women (RPW), was established in 1985 and housed in National Taiwan University. Although located in National Taiwan University, this program was not officially recognized as a unit of the university, but rather was hidden as a subsection of the Population Center under the protective wing of its executive secretary, a feminist geographer, with the understanding support of the director then. The funding of RPW was not from the university. Instead, it was funded by outside source from an international non-governmental organization, the Asia Foundation, as part of its UN Decade for Women program. As an unofficial program, not only half of the original faculty members who helped the establishment of the program were not affiliated with the university, the program was not known to or recognized as a unit by faculty within the university until 1998. Then, the program was officially integrated into the university as Section on Gender Studies and its host institution was also renamed as Population and Women Studies Center to signify the recognition of the existence of the program. The main missions and goals of this program were designated to compile and disseminate data and knowledge about women and women’s status in Taiwan, rather than to develop curriculum and to implement courses of women’s studies. It may be for this reason that National Taiwan University only started to offer undergraduate women’s studies certificate program in 1997, more than a decade after the establishment of RPW. It should be noted that one of the data that RPW continuously assembled over the years were the lists of courses related to women offered in universities. Circulation of these data via its Newsletters 2 among women/gender scholars has facilitated the promotion of women’s studies on campus and contributed to the development of women’s movement.

The first women’s studies program designated for the task of curriculum development was the Gender and Society Research Program (RPGS) initiated in National Tsing Hua University in 1989. Similar to RPW, the initial 3 years funding for the program also came from the Asia Foundation. Unlike RPW, RPGS was designed from the start to be an integral part of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences of the university. The establishment of RPGS went through an official process of proposal, review, and approval by the college faculty meetings. It was a product of internal initiation and was embedded in the college from the start. All the members of the program were faculty from departments or graduate institutes within the college. It was accepted as a unit of the college with its own office space and administrative staff, including a director and an assistant, even though it was treated only as a research center and supported by project-based funding by the university administration. In addition to its effort on developing a systematic curriculum of women’s studies for undergraduate courses through general education, the work of RPGS also included offering graduate courses related to women and gender through the various graduate institutions, such as literature, history, sociology, and anthropology, where faculty members of the program come from. A Gender Studies Program offering an MA certificate was officially accepted in the university curriculum beginning in 2003. Since Tsing Hua University is a predominantly science and engineer school, as a strategy of its feminist transformation of undergraduate education, RPGS also offered, through general education curriculum, two courses—Gender and Society and Gender and Culture, for the all the university undergraduate students every year since its establishment in 1989. These courses were taught by its faculty members either as a team or by individual faculty. Later, these two course were integrated and renamed as Introduction to Gender Studies and is now offered regularly as prerequisite for students interested in pursuing Gender Studies as a minor for undergraduates. Currently, RPGS offers two Gender Studies Certificate Programs: one for the graduate level (MA Certificate in Gender Studies, 2003) while the other, at undergraduate level, as a minor available to students of Interdisciplinary Program of Humanities and Social Science since 2005. The Interdisciplinary Program of Humanities and Social Sciences students may obtain a certificate of minor after they fulfill 18 credits of course requirements, including both core (2 courses and 6 credits) and selective (4 courses and 12 credits) courses. Gender Studies was restructured to the minor status (from the status of a major subject) in 2010 due to unstable teaching support and courses offerings, which was a consequence of its status as nonindependent department. Despite of this unhappy turn of event, this gender studies program remains as the only officially recognized undergraduate studies program among universities.

There were many reasons why RPGS, compared with RPW, was able to secure an official position from the beginning and thus facilitate its access to course offering. The main one has to do with the relative youngness of the college and its faculty and the liberal atmosphere and culture fostered by the college of humanities and social sciences in the late 80s when the social and political transition in Taiwan was already underway. The College of Humanities and Social Sciences to which the Gender and Society program belonged was established in 1984. The installment of a liberal arts college in a predominantly and high profiled science-technology university in the mid-1980s may indicate a shift in the attitude of university administration to be more progressive. Although the new college remained relatively marginal within the university power structure, this disadvantaged position of the college of humanities and social sciences relative to the powerful science-engineer decision-making center in turn provided the gender program a safe tuck-away cove, and consequently a freer space or play field. The naming of the program using Gender rather than Woman was also indicative of its theoretical orientations and reflective of the disciplinary backgrounds, as well as the gender composition of its founding members which included both women and men. (For the details regarding the differences in the above mentioned two programs, please refer to Chen 2005).

8.4.4 The Rooting Stage: The 1990s

This pattern of establishing, unofficially, interdisciplinary program in universities continued in the 90s. Gender Study Center was set up in Kaohsiung Medical College in 1992; Gender and Space Program came to existence in National Taiwan University in 1995 and Sex/Gender Program at National Central University in the same year. Finally, Gender and Media Center was set up at Shih Sin University in 1997. Several points worth of noting from these development. First, the naming of these three programs reflected the diversification of the focus of women’s studies from Women to Gender and Sex. This signaled the transition in the focus of feminist scholars from the category of woman to the concept of gender and further expanded to the subject of sex and the critique of gender. Gender was becoming the standard term in the naming of the programs. It is also significant that two of the three programs were organized by male scholars and the last one was by a woman and a man. Gender, rather than woman, appears more accommodating to this situation.

Diversity in focus also indicated the beginning of feminist concerns with the subject of sex or sexuality and thus the emergence of radical feminism among women movement in Taiwan. The issue of sex and sexuality gained increasing visibility among academics as well as among activists (Ku 1997). Eventually, the conflict over the issue of sexuality and (right of) prostitution between the so-called “pro-prostitution” and “anti-prostitution” camps among feminists and women activists evolved to become the storm-eye of the politics of women’s movement. In 1996, sexuality became the demarcation wherein the activists of women’s movement in Taiwan were divided into two opposite camps: “pro-sex” versus “anti-“sex or “pro-prostitution” versus “anti-prostitution”. This conflict between feminist groups culminated into an open confrontation among feminist activists during “the incident of public prostitutes” in 1998 (Lu 2007). Those feminists who favor the policy of abolition of public prostitution were labeled as “the conservative” by those activists who were against such measure and supported the right of public prostitutes as sexual workers. This group, self-labeled as “the radical”, claimed that provision of prostitutes and protection of their work rights is a step toward the liberation of women’s sexuality which should be the goal of women’s movement.

8.4.5 The Formalization Stage: 2000 and Beyond

The first formally institutionalized gender studies program within university in Taiwan was established in the year of 2000 when the Graduate Institute of Gender and Education of National Kaohsiung Normal University was approved by the Ministry of Education. This may appear rather surprising and ironic at first sight. For normal universities (or teachers’ college) in Taiwan were conventionally regarded as conservative educational institution and thus would be the least likely to be the front runner in the promotion of feminisms and feminist pedagogy. This program marked the first official acknowledgement of feminism and gender as a discipline of higher education in Taiwan. The establishment of this degree-granting program was particularly significant because normal university is public university. Establishment of any new formal program in public university requires a complicated process of application and approval by various committees at different levels both within the university and at the ministry level. Therefore, the establishment of this first graduate program, MA in Gender and Education, marked a triumph of feminist efforts and deserved celebration. It seems to create a new space for gender studies in higher education. Two other graduate institutes of gender studies were established in the following year, 2001: one was in Kaohsiung Medical College and the other in Shih Hsin University in Taipei. Both of these universities were private-funded and had a long tradition of offering professional training for medical professionals and journalists respectively. The MA degree program of Gender Studies of Kaohsiung Medical University was initially established as a MA degree program of the School of Nursing and reassigned to College of Humanities and Social Science focusing on the issues of gender and medicine and gender and ethnicity in 2012. The MA program of Shi Sin focused on the issues of sexual harassment and violence and sex and culture including media.

The “mushrooming” of three gender studies programs in higher education within a short interval of two years period represented the formal institutionalization of women/gender studies in Taiwan. It has been viewed as an important accomplishment of the long process of struggle of feminist scholars and women activists. It signified a new phase of women movement and a possible beginning of the mainstreaming of feminist knowledge in higher education in Taiwan. Feminist scholars, in alliance with women activists, were able to use social pressure generated by public demand for prevention of sexual crime as the forums for gender discourses and further cultivate supportive conditions for the passage of the law of gender-equal education. The Law of Gender Educational Equality was initiated in 1998, drafted in 2000 and passed in 2004. This partly explained why the first formal graduate gender program funded by the government was focused on education and in a normal university. Despite this encouraging achievement, it is significant to observe that it will take another 10 years from the first Master program to the first PhD program, 3 and it is not clear when will the next public university, especially among those leading research universities, set up another graduate institute of gender studies.

8.5 Gendering the Higher Education as a Feminist Movement

If the above depiction of institutional growth gives the impression of slow progress of gendering of higher education in Taiwan, it may be misleading. In addition to the institutionalization of women/gender studies programs, there was another way by which women’s studies acted as an arm of feminist movement. It may be done either by integrating (slipping-in) the subject of women into existing courses or by introducing new courses on women and gender into the curriculum. Table 8.3 indicates the various statistics of the number of courses on women/gender offered in different types of universities and colleges (excluding junior colleges) (Table 8.3) and the ways through which these courses were offered: either by regular departments or general education for the period from 1988 to 2005 (Table 8.4) and 2006 to 2013 (Table 8.5).

Table 8.3 Availability of women/gender courses in Universities by types of colleges: 1988–2005
Full size table
Table 8.4 Availability of women/gender courses in Universities by type of courses. 1998–2005
Full size table
Table 8.5 Availability of women/gender courses in Universities by types of courses: 2006–2013
Full size table

Several trends are worth noting in these statistics. First, from Table 8.3, there was a huge growth and accelerating increase in the number of university and college in the 30 years period. The total number of university and college grew from 39 in 1988 to 145 in 2005, a triple increase and an addition of more than a hundred in number in two decades. Similarly, in terms of the number of universities which offered courses on women and gender, the increase also looked impressive, from a minimum of 14 in 1988 to 87 in 2005; a sixfold growth in two decades. However, if we examine the increase in terms of the ratio of the number of universities offering women/gender courses to the total number of university, the rapidity of increase was not particularly surprising. It was a moderate increase of 28% in two decades, from 36% in 1988 to 60% in 2005. More importantly, the trend of development was not always progressive or consistent. The ratio of the universities which started to offer women and gender courses was about one-third (36%) of all the universities in 1988 and fluctuated to one-quarter (26%) in 1991and remained constant till 1997. Only after 2001 did the ratio start to climb up and increase at a faster pace to surpass the early bench mark. In 2003, almost half (48%) of the universities in Taiwan offered some courses on gender and women. In 2005, the number reached its highest level (60%). Over half of the universities and colleges, gender-related courses were included in curricula. Read in another way, it may be hard to believe that in two-fifths of the universities or colleges, there was still no gender-related course available in their curricula. The accelerated increase in the number and ratio of universities offering women/gender courses at this point of time may be attributed to the passing of Gender Education Equity Act which requires all schools to include gender equality education in the curriculum in 2004. It may be expected that this trend will continue for the near future.

To explain why there was no significant increase in the ratio of university offering women/gendering courses until after 1997, one glimpse of the recent history of the development of higher education in Taiwan over the last two decades may be revealing (MOE 2005). In many Asian cultures, attainment of university education is a highly desirable social value and an indicator of social mobility. Increasing the opportunity of the general population to attend college and university education becomes an attractive political rhetoric among competing political parties. Taiwan as a democratizing society which underwent political transition since 1989 was a case in point. Expansion of higher education across the island to less urbanized areas and provision of higher education to general populace including less well-off sector has been a campaign slogan and political promise among competing political parties in the past elections. A look at the composition of the total increase by the types of institutions provided some clues. Although the total number of the institutions of higher education, including university, college, and junior college, only increased moderately from 105 to 159 between 1986 and 2004; the number of institutions classified as a university, however, increased drastically from 16 to 75, the figures for college are 12–70. In contrast, the number of junior colleges decreased from 77 to 14 for the same period. From these figures, it is reasonable to infer that the increase in the number of universities and colleges came from the upgrading of the original junior college to 4-year college and for this latter group to further upgrade to become a university. 4

This process of “upgrading” was further accelerated to “universitization” with more college becoming university from 1996 onwards, according to the official statistics of MOE. And this “universitization” may have led to the upturn in the ratio described earlier. Unlike the junior colleges which offer technical training as their main goals, universities and colleges usually require general education program for undergraduate students or have disciplines of humanities and/or social sciences. These programs or departments would most likely to require and offer gender/women courses. Another factor responsible for the sharp upturn of the trend was due to the implementation of Gender Education Equity Law by MOE (2004) which required schools to offer at least four hours teaching on gender equality per week in their curricula. And this regulation definitely had similar effect on higher education.

About gendering of curriculum of higher education, there is one more interesting dimension to be noted. Table 8.4 gave information of the availability of gender/women courses by the types of university and by the paths of course offering: either via department or general education, for the year 1997–2005. First of all, most of the gender/women courses were offered in general universities or colleges. For students of professional and teacher colleges, gender courses were available mainly through general education curricula and they become more available only after 2000. Further examination of the composition of all the gender/women courses shows two paths of curriculum gendering. That is, although majority of the feminist courses (90%) were offered through the curricula of departments and graduate institutes, especially before the year of 2000, other way of gendering of higher education is through general education curricula. As the total number of gender courses increased, the proportion of course gendering via general education curriculum also increased. For example, among the total of 252 women/gender courses, about one-third (32%) of them were offered through general education curriculum in 2001. Compared with that figure in previous years, it was an increase of more than 20%. The trend of gendering of higher education accelerated after 1997. In 2005, among the total of 829 courses across 87 universities and colleges, about three-fifths (63%) were taught through departments while two-fifth (37%) were through general education curriculum. In contrast, for the engineer and technical colleges, general education appeared to be the main channel through which gendering of curriculum has taken place. The ratios of gender courses for department and GE were 56% versus 44% in 2005 respectively. Since general education courses are part of the required credits for college graduation, prevalence or acceptance of the gendered curriculum can be viewed as further signs of gender mainstreaming and incorporation of feminist knowledge into higher education in Taiwan. 5

Table 8.5 provides information on the number of gender-related courses offered by the type of higher education institutes for the period of 2005 to 2013. Unlike the data of the previous table, which were calculated from course listings of RPW Newsletters, these are statistics collected by the Ministry of education. They may be more complete, but based on a more inclusive definition of gender, and thus may inflate the numbers. From this table, it was obvious that the number of gender-related courses although increased steadily, but only slightly, among all types of university. Even for the public university and college, which has a higher ratio of gender-related courses in the curriculum, the difference in the ratios of gender-related courses to the total number of courses between the highest (4.1% of 2012) and that (2.6%) of 2006 was only minimal. Moreover, the majority of the gender-related curriculum was offered as elective, rather than required, courses to students in general universities/colleges, both public and private. However, for professional schools, including teacher and technological colleges/institutes, gender-related courses were offered more as required than selective curriculum to students. This high ratio of required gender courses, (but a low ratio of total gender courses) among professional schools should be interpreted cautiously. It seems to make sense given the regulations stipulated by the Gender Education Equity Act requiring all schools to provide a minimum of four credits/hours of gender education in the curriculum. (Wei and Fang 2012) Thus, for these schools, the purpose of offering the gender-related courses was likely to fulfill law regulations, rather than to engender the curriculum or to incorporate feminist knowledge.

8.6 Mainstreaming Feminist Knowledge Within Curriculum: Agents of Change

Production of feminist knowledge of women and gender was viewed by many as a foundation as well as a consequence of the continuous growth of the contemporary women’s movement in the US. (Boxer 1982). Transformation of knowledge production and dissemination from the standpoint of women as the dominated group not only provides women’s movement with the theoretical foundation for action and mobilization but also constitutes the legacy for the contemporary feminist project (Harding 1991; Hartsock 1987; Smith 1987a, b). Identification of the disciplines which are most active in the process of feminist transition of knowledge can reveal the agents of women’s movement in Taiwan. Over the past 20 years, among all the fields of knowledge production, who were the main agents in the feminist transformation of knowledge production or dissemination? Or, stated differently, which disciplines were the most active in leading this project of feminist transformation of knowledge and who were the most accomplished in transforming their curricula? Table 8.6 provides the breakdown of all the courses on women and gender by subjects from 1988 to 2014. Several trends concerning the feminist knowledge dissemination may be observed from these data.

Table 8.6 Distribution of women/gender courses by subject: 1988–2014*
Full size table

First of all, there was a clear trend of diversification and specialization of feminist knowledge production in terms of the subjects of courses. That is, the subject matter of gender courses started from the general course of women (i.e., “add the women and stir”) and the discussion of “relations between two sexes” (liang xing guan xi) and progressed to more specific topics of women and critical analysis of gender relations. In 1988, among the total of 53 courses, almost all the courses (91%) can be classified as general courses which were titled as sex/gender relations (liang xing guan xi) or women studies (fu nyu ian jiu). However, starting from 1991, the proportion of such courses decreased very rapidly to only less than half of all the women/gender courses (45%) in 1994 and declined further to only one-fifth (21%) by the end of the decade. On the other hand, courses focused on specific dimensions of gender system, such as feminist theory, gender and society, and gender and culture, increased significantly. Diversification and intensification of feminist knowledge dissemination gained force after 1997. For the next decade, the subjects of gender curriculum were further expanded. Gender and education and gender and politics became the two focused subjects of gender curriculum after 2003. Currently, the four leading subjects of gender curriculum are feminist theories, gender and education, gender and culture, politics and society, in addition to the general courses on gender/women, which still constituted the largest proportion of all gender courses (31%) in 2014. Unsurprisingly, economics remains a field immunized from feminist transformation.

Secondly, in terms of the specific topics and disciplines wherein courses on women and gender had increased the most, gender and society and gender and culture were two leading categories, in addition to the general introduction course of women’s/gender studies until the end of 1990s. However, after 2003, courses related to gender and education and politics also increased and gained increasing weight among gender curriculum. This trend of development may be related to the implementation of various gender equality laws and increasing visibility of women in politics in Taiwan after 2000. Increasing presence of women in public affairs, including politics, may attract the attention of general public and the interest of political scientists as well and hence increase courses of related topics. The development of the course of feminist theories deserved special notice in the analysis of gendering of the curriculum. It is the one course which has gained substantial growth and remained important over the entire period. It started from almost none in 1988 through 1994 and then gained a big jump to 18% in 1997. In 2003, there are 88 feminist theories courses offered in all the universities. Put differently, this means, on average, more than half of the universities (88/158) offer one course related to feminist theories. This is significant since courses on feminist theories definitely entail not only critiques of malestream academic traditions but also advocate knowledge produced based on women’s vantage and standpoint of view (Watkins 1983; Stimpson 1978). It can be taken as an indicator of the progress of the feminist transformation of the liberal arts education of university in Taiwan.

The “flowering” of feminist theories during the period of late 80s and 90s may not be an accident. During these two decades, many disciplines in the social sciences and humanities witnessed a profound transformation of “postmodern” paradigm shift or “postmodern” challenges of traditional concepts and analytical frameworks. Feminism and feminist theory, likewise, experienced this “postmodern” impact and resulted in the emergence of cultural studies and the proliferation of theories courses, both feminist and queer theories, in academic, particularly in the discipline of literature.

Another way to reveal the agents behind the feminist transformation of curriculum is to examine the distribution of gender/women courses offered by discipline or department. Table 8.7 provides counts of gender/women courses offered in different disciplines from 1988 to 2014. Overall, based on the total number of courses offered, general education program remained to be the most significant agent through whom college curriculum may be gendered. In terms of the specific disciplines which were the more active and thus more contributive to this process of feminist transformation of curriculum, education, sociology (including gender studies) and social work/welfare, literature, English literature in particular, and psychology appeared to be the leading departments over the past 25 years. Among them, literature and sociology were the pioneers, education and psychology were late comers. In contrast, the least enthusiastic disciplines among the liberal arts were anthropology and philosophy. These findings were very different from that was observed in the history of women’s studies in the U.S. (Stacey and Thorn 1985; 2006). In the U.S., among the disciplines of humanities and social sciences, literature, history, and anthropology were considered to be most receptive to feminist transformation of knowledge production, while sociology was criticized as more resistant to such revolution. The factors identified as facilitating the “feminist revolution” in these disciplines include the number of women faculty, the interpretative (vs. positive) nature of knowledge, and visibility of feminist legacy in its tradition. In Taiwan, although these disciplines may share some of the same characteristics with its counterpart in the U.S., absence of feminist legacy in the discipline’s history has led to a different result in its “feminist revolution”. This difference is particularly obvious in the disciplines of anthropology and history. Philosophy and economics, however, appear to be equally resistant to feminist challenges in both contexts.

Table 8.7 Distribution of feminist courses by disciplines/departments: 1988–2014*
Full size table

In addition to course listings, Fig. 8.1 shows the distribution of gender/feminist scholars across the fields of their self-reported specialization among humanities and social sciences as listed in various government and nongovernmental data bases in 2005. Among the 15 fields identified, the highest concentration of scholars (107) falls on literature. If literature is defined more inclusively to include arts, films, drama and even cultural studies, then the total number of gender scholars would amount to 130. That is equivalent to one-fifth (21%) of the total of 632 gender/women scholars of 2004. The second highest concentration is in sociology (71), followed closely by education (68). Two applied fields—social work/welfare (50) and counseling (51) also have significant number of scholars identified as gender specialists. The field of history also contributed significant number of gender scholars (58) in Taiwan. On the contrary, the number of anthropologists and philosophers who self- identified as gender specialists was relatively small, only 13 and 18 respectively. These figures provide further support to the earlier interpretation about the agents of feminist transformation of the curriculum. Undoubtedly, this distribution of gender scholars among disciplines reflects the differences in the overall size or the total number of scholars among the disciplines in Taiwan higher education. Since anthropology and philosophy are two smallest disciplines, and thus can only contribute fewer gender scholars. What is rather unusual would be the case of sociology to emerge as the second largest concentration of gender scholars, given the fact that sociology has not been a large discipline in faculty size or many in terms of number of establishments (Fig. 8.1).

Fig. 8.1
figure 1

Distribution of gender studies scholars by disciplines (Data sources: WRP, NTU: http://ccms.ntu.edu.tw/~wrp/index.htm APEC website: http://www.apecgender.org/ExpGender_Show.asp (Oct. 2004) Gender Equality in Education, MOE: http://wrp.psc.ntu.edu.tw/Human/Web (Oct. 2004))

Full size image

The difference in the number of scholars engaged in feminist pedagogy between anthropology and history needs to be discussed within the context of these two disciplines respectively. That is, the size of the discipline matters. History, in terms of number of department among all the universities, is one of the largest academic disciplines, while anthropology is one of the smaller in Taiwan. While there is a department of history in almost every university, only selected few public universities has anthropology department. While history courses have been the required subjects of general education curriculum, anthropology was a specialized field and elective course. Taking this difference in the scale or size of disciplines into consideration, the difference in the feminist orientation between the disciplines may turn out to be less than it appears. Furthermore, given the gender composition and politics of these two disciplines as being male dominant, women faculty is likely to be young and junior, rather in senior, decision-making position. Consequently, even though their numbers of women faculty are not the least unfavorable compared with other departments of liberal arts college, the effect of their effort on the transformation of gender knowledge did not measure up to their number. However, the contribution of these feminist scholars when measured against such structural barriers of these disciplines should not be underestimated.

On the other hand, sociology as a discipline or feminist sociologists as a group stands out among all the actors of this gendering of curriculum. That is, sociology, and the feminists within, has played a rather active role in leading this project of feminist transformation of knowledge in Taiwan. This is more the remarkable if it was put within the academic context of Taiwan. Sociology is a relatively small discipline in Taiwan in terms of number of departments among universities, and the total number of sociologists is relatively small compared with other disciplines. There were only thirty-three (33) sociology-related departments and graduate programs among all universities (168) in Taiwan; the total membership of Taiwan Sociological Association is 223 in 2014. Thus, sociology, even if defined broadly to include social work and social welfare, did not attain a prominent position within the academic community of Taiwan’s higher education. Then, why is it more active than others? Several factors may be proposed to explain why sociology constitutes a more conducive environment for feminist pedagogy. First, it may be explained by its theoretical orientation developed in the recent decades. Unlike the positivism tradition of sociology in the US, sociology in Taiwan was more oriented toward Marxist theoretical tradition and interpretative analysis in methodology in the late twentieth century. These epistemological orientations of sociology not only emphasize on the critical perspective of social theory and analysis of power but also mandate the social relevancy and liberating effect of knowledge production. These characteristics, in turn, lead to a more sympathetic environment for feminists and more receptive attitude to gender courses and teaching. Or, conversely, a critical sociological orientation offers less legitimacy to resist feminist claims. Secondly, the marginal position of this discipline in Taiwan academic politics may also help to lessen masculine or malestream dominance and create more space for feminist innovation in the curriculum.

Of course, the democratic transition of Taiwan’s political culture also plays a significant role in facilitating the awareness of the situation of women and the reception of feminist discourses. Not only sociology was frequently nick-named as a discipline of social movement, many sociologists, including women sociologists, were organizers and participants in many social protests or grass root movements, including women movement, in the democratization process of Taiwan. Prevalence of social protests and activism certainly facilitates a more permissible atmosphere and provides ground for the legitimization of incorporating feminist challenges to traditional male-centered curriculum. Another indication of the leading role played by the feminist scholars of sociology came from the data presented in the institutionalization of gender studies (Table 8.1). Among the 12 institutes of gender/women’s studies and Taiwan Feminist Scholars Association as well, many of the founding and active members at the early stage of its institutionalization were scholars sociology with a strong critical and social orientation.

Finally, since theories and theorization were accorded a special status in any project of knowledge transformation, examination of the contents of courses of feminist theories can provide a window to view the ideas behind the feminist movement of knowledge transformation. A preliminary classification of all the courses titled “feminist theories” by their subject matters was attempted (data was not shown). A few points may be observed from these data. First, feminist theories were used liberally to denote a wide array of topics and issues redressing women status and gender social relations as well as addressing the various discourses of the different feminist theories. Two of the most frequently addressed gender issues were gender inequality and gender and power/politics. However, for the literature scholars, psychoanalysis and cultural analysis appeared to be the dominant interest of their feminist theories courses. Of particular significance is that there is certain theoretical sensitivity and awareness of “difference” among women by local feminist scholars. Not only the classical and contemporary western feminist theories but also gender theories of the third world and colored women were included in the theory courses. Finally, there were also the postmodern, radical strain of feminist theories courses such as French feminist theory, postcolonial feminist theory, and queer theories offered. In addition to feminist theories, courses of feminist methodology and epistemology were incorporated into the curriculum as part of the knowledge transformation.

8.7 Summary and Conclusions

Among the many distinguishing features of this second wave women’s movement, the establishment and institutionalization of women’s studies program in higher education was agreed among many as one of the most defining and significant characteristics. Despite its late start, the development of women’s studies and, likewise, women’s movement in Taiwan has been impressive among Asian societies. Over the past 30 years, women movement and women’s studies program in Taiwan have come a long way. Women Studies has been expanded and renamed Gender Studies. Currently, there is a total of eleven such programs: three gender studies graduate institutes offering MA and PhD degrees and seven interdisciplinary gender/women’s studies programs. These serve as platforms for integrating faculty from various disciplines to promote and offer courses on women and gender in all universities. In view of the importance of the feminist reform of curriculum for the contemporary women liberation movement to achieve gender equality, and yet there has been no systematic investigation of its development in Taiwan available, this chapter thus attempts an analysis of the process of the development of women’s and gender studies in higher education as a reflection of women’s movement in Taiwan. It also tried to identify the actors shaping up the unique path of the engendering of higher education in Taiwan and emphasize its relationship to the political democratization in general and women’s movement in particular.

Literature review of women’s transformation of knowledge system was approached from the following two aspects: (1) feminist research and (2) women and gender curriculum. While there have various analyses of the development of feminist research available, systematic investigation of the process of the gendering of curriculum in higher education in Taiwan was limited. This chapter, therefore, focused on the analysis of the process of the development of women’s and gender studies curriculum in higher education as a reflection of the feminist transformation of knowledge and women movement in Taiwan. The paths and ways by which women studies developed as an institution had been various and diverse. In general, two major models of institutionalization practiced in the West, especially in the US, may be identified. They were referred to as the integrated and separatist models. The most common model turns out to be an interdisciplinary program of women/gender studies consisted of faculty from different departments of humanities and social sciences and offered a combination of minor, major, certificate and/or degree for students interested in gender/women/feminist studies.

To delineate the mapping of Taiwan’s women movement as manifested in the process of gendering of college curriculum, data collected from various academic sources and government agencies were used as bases of analysis to examine the following three dimensions. The first one is the institutionalization of women’s studies program within academics; the second one is the mainstreaming of women/gender courses; and the third one is the transformation of feminist knowledge.

Although the publication of New Feminism by Annette (Hsiu-lien) Lu in 1972 was viewed by many scholars as the beginning of contemporary women’s movement in Taiwan, there was no organized effort focused on women’s issues on university campuses until a decade later. The first women research program within university, Research Program on Women (WRP), was established unofficially in 1985. And the first “official” Gender and Society Program designated to teaching women courses was established in 1989. There is a total of seven (7) women/gender research programs or centers ever established over the course of last three decades from 1985–2015. More importantly, in terms of feminist pedagogy, there are only three formal graduate institutes offering MA and PhD degrees for gender studies among all of the higher education institutions in Taiwan since 2000. For undergraduate studies, there was not yet any department offering gender or women studies as a discipline of undergraduate major or BA degree. At most, there has been a total of 12 interdisciplinary teaching programs offering a certificate for undergraduate students who are interested in gender/women/sexuality studies by providing courses through various departments of humanities or social sciences. The process of the institutionalization of women/gender research centers may be divided into three stages: the sprouting; the rooting; and the formalization stages. These three stages of the process of institutionalization were roughly parallel to the stages in the political democratization in Taiwan.

Gendering of the higher education may be ascertained by how the subject of women or course of gender was integrated into existing courses or introduced as new courses into the curriculum. In terms of the number of universities, which offered courses on women and gender, there seems impressive increase, from a minimum of 14 in 1988 to 87 in 2005; a sixfold growth in two decades. However, if examined in terms of the ratio of the number of universities offering women/gender courses to the total number of university, the rapidity of increase was not particularly encouraging. It was a moderate increase of 28% in two decades, from 36% in 1988 to the highest level (60%) in 2005. The accelerated increase in the number and ratio of universities offering women/gender courses at this point of time may be attributed to the passing of Gender Education Equity Act which requires all schools to include gender equality education in the curriculum in 2004.

About gendering of the curriculum of higher education, there is one more interesting dimension to be noted. Most of the gender/women courses were offered in general universities or colleges through liberal arts departments. For students of professional and teacher colleges, gender courses were available mainly through general education curricula and they become more available only after 2000. When based on a more inclusive definition of gender, the number of gender-related courses although increased steadily, but only slightly, among all types of universities between 2005 and 2013. Moreover, gender courses were offered to fulfill the regulations of Gender Equality Law, particularly in professional and technical colleges, rather than to engender the curriculum or to incorporate feminist knowledge.

As the subjects of gender courses, there was a clear trend of diversification and specialization of feminist knowledge production in terms of the subjects of courses. That is, the subject matter of gender courses started from the general course of women (i.e., “add the women and stir”) and the discussion of “relations between two sexes” (liang xing guan xi) to progress gradually to more specific topics of women and critical analysis of gender relations. Currently, the four leading subjects of gender curriculum are feminist theories, gender and education, gender and culture, politics and society, in addition to the general courses on gender/women, which still constituted the largest proportion of all gender courses in 2014. Unsurprisingly, economics remains a field immunized from feminist transformation. The development of the course of feminist theories deserved special notice. It is one of the courses, which has gained substantial growth and remained important over the entire period. This development reflected the impact of “postmodern transformation” experienced among feminists in Taiwan.

Agents of mainstreaming feminist knowledge: In terms of the specific disciplines which were the more active and thus more contributive to this process of feminist transformation of curriculum, education, sociology and social work/welfare, literature, English literature in particular, and psychology appeared to be the leading departments over the last 25 years. Among them, literature and sociology were the pioneers, education and psychology were late comers. In contrast, the least enthusiastic disciplines were anthropology and philosophy. If accessed by the distribution of feminist scholars across disciplines, literature and sociologists remained as the two leading groups. On the contrary, the number of anthropologists and philosophers who self- identified as gender specialists was relatively small. Undoubtedly, this distribution of gender scholars among disciplines reflects the differences in the overall size or the total number of scholars among the disciplines in Taiwan higher education. When interpreted within the academic context of Taiwan, what is rather unusual would be the case of sociology to emerge as the second largest concentration of feminist scholars, given the fact that sociology has not been a large discipline in faculty size or many in terms of number of establishments.

Conclusions: From the above analysis of the development of women’s/gender curriculum, it seems clear that women’s movement has achieved a minimum level of success in terms of its efforts in gendering liberal arts education of university and mainstreaming feminist pedagogy. In the two and a half decade from 1988, women’s and gender courses were available in more than half of the institutions of Taiwan’s higher education. Gendering of the curriculum was achieved not only through traditional departments and disciplines, there was also significant progress through general education curricula and interdisciplinary programs. This reflects the vitality and versatility of feminist scholars and women’s movement in Taiwan. However, in terms of the acceptance and prevalence of gender studies as an independent academic institute or discipline, especially in the prestigious public research university, there remains much to be desired by feminist ideals.

Finally, as to the disciplines or agents which were most active in leading this academic feminist transformation, literature and sociology, both defined broadly, were the most visible. In contrast to the conclusions based on the U. S. experiences, feminist scholars in the field of sociology not only were the most likely to assume the organizing roles in initiating various women/gender programs to practice feminist transformation of knowledge and education. They were also most likely to be active in other women’s organizations. Much different from their counterparts in the U. S., the disciplines of history and anthropology were rather lagging in their feminist transformation project. In short, while there is a global project of feminist transformation, there are also many local differences in the process.

Notes

  1. 1.

    Joan Korenman: http://userpages.umbc.edu/~korenman/wmst/programs.html; Kate Golden: http://kategolden.com/artermisguide/.

  2. 2.

    Renamed as Forum in Women’s and Gender Studies after issue no. 66, Dec. 2003.

  3. 3.

    The Graduate Institute of Human Sexuality of Shu Te University was also established in 2000. Although this MA program is nontraditional in the sense of focusing on sex and sexuality as the subject of study, it takes medical and biological approaches toward the understanding of human sexuality. It does not emphasize the promotion of feminist analysis of sex and sexuality in its mission. It was not generally considered as a feminist gender studies institution.

  4. 4.

    In other words, while there was real increase in the number of university, the magnitude of this growth was relatively small. They were a result of the upgrading process of junior college moving into college and the professional college to become 4-year university.

  5. 5.

    However, due to upgrading of junior college resulting in the rapid increase in the number of university in late 90s, there was a reverse trend of increasing proportion of general course after the new century. Fast growth of in the number of university, as compared to junior vocational college, is likely to result in the increasing demand for gender courses as required by law in general education curriculum for technology and engineer types of university.