Taiwan Church News
3401 edition
1 – 7 May, 2017
Church Ministry PCT 2017 Women Forum Empowers Women’s Consciousness On Gender Equality Reported by Lin Chia-jing On April 27 and 28, a 2017 Women Forum focusing to raise the consciousness of gender equality among Taiwan women was jointly held by PCT’s Women’s Ministry Committee and Gender Justice Committee. Rev Su Jeng-fen, who was also an overseas missionary, and Lawyer Su Jia-hong were both invited to share their thoughts on gender equality from either a point of spiritual faith or legal rights vital to women. Rev Su Jeng-fen, once a spiritual counselor at Rose Garden Foundation and an enrolled student at Graduate Institute of Gender Education of National Kaohsiung Normal University, shared her stories of dark gender experiences from being a beetle nut sales-girl since she was a child helping family’s daily business to a female pastor busy in a hierarchical church organization. In different roles assigned to her in her growth, be it beetle nut sales-girl or a female pastor afterwards, a milieu of gender discrimination or exploit or oppression is always haunted around, Rev Su remarked. She stressed that, after a long term struggle in modern human history, the female’s body integrity is an important achievement of sexual liberation, which should not be equated as a sexual promiscuity. And gender discrimination is like a gang of evil-doers, she said, they came to rob the self-respect, confidence, freedom and happiness from the women. In a consequence, the women were despised, overlooked, riddiculed, rejected, she said, adding that finally they did not like themselves anymore. Rev Su expressed that an authentic faith, instead of being confined to religious rituals only, is to care for life and spirituality of the people and stand up fighting against any form of oppression. Retrieving the history of some major amendment on Taiwan’s Civil Code, especially in Part IV of Family, Lawyer Su Jia-hong affirmed gender justice had been gradually achieved in the family, for example the women’s surname need not to be imposed by her husband or father, the custody right of the children is no more dominated by her husband, and etc. But, there are still many unfair civil codes requiring to be amended for gender justice, Lawyer Su remarked, for example, under current Act for Ancestor Worship Guild the male is exclusively granted the right of succession to property than the female, or the legal ages allowing men and women to engage or marry are discriminated in gender and etc. At last, in order to practically protect women’s legal rights, Lawyer Su briefed the audience with Powerpoint Slides to show what were the points of Taiwan’s current Matrimonial Property Regimes and Domestic Violence Protection Act and instructed them how to write a will legally. Responding with an bursting applauds, the participating women were advised by Lawyer Su: “Women have to understand the law better than men!” Translated by Peter Wolfe |