Impact on women leaders in Asia: Does

having more women leaders improve

gender equality?
Santiago Suárez Villalón

In this essay, we examined the relationship between having women leaders in politics,
specifically in the national legislature, and improvements made in closing the gender gap. A contrast was
made between two Asian countries: Japan and Taiwan. These countries are highly similar in a lot of
socio-economic indexes, which makes them a great case of comparison. Both are developmental states,
they have high levels of technology, high levels of HDI and both have one of the top-performing
economies in the region (World Bank). In terms of gender gap, though, the scenario is completely
different (more on this later). We concluded that having more women in National Legislature does have
an impact on gender equality, mainly through the instauration of quotas, which force the investment (both
economic and effort-wise) from parties to female candidates. This resulted in, first, constant surpasses of
the quotas, making them unnecessary, and in the second place, helping women overcome societal
obstacles when entering parties and politics in general.

Globally, women have been misrepresented in every level of decision-making positions

worldwide (UN Women). According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), in 2020 the average for Asia
in percentage of women in congress (both houses combined when applicable) was 20.0%. World average
is 24.9% and the Americas and Europe had 31.3 and 29.9 percent, respectively. This, though, have been
improving, as the world average was only 11% at 1995 (UN Women).

As the evidence shows, Asia is really lagging behind other continents in terms of legislative
gender equality. But how does or two case countries compare? While Taiwan has a stunning 41.7 percent
women in its unicameral legislature, the Legislative Yuan (Political Studies Association), Japan’s
National Diet is composed by only 9.9 percent women (IPU). According to the Japan Times, there is still
debate about whether this is caused by a “paternalistic social structure” in society or other issues like the
lack of long-established support groups male Diet members “have relied on” for women. Many say it is
just because of the lack of quotas (Japan Times). And this last case is exactly what Taiwan implemented.
The country has had gender quotas for the Legislative Yuan since the early 1950s under authoritarian rule
(Huang, 2015), but it wasn’t until de 90s when they bumped up the quotas and saw outstanding rise in
women taking legislative roles.

Although we talked about the global context in terms of gender gap in national legislature, the
Japanese and Taiwanese cases, and the possible reasons why those countries’ legislature is composed in
that way, we have not mentioned if a higher women-to-men ratio in congress improves gender equality in
that area. This is fundamental to explain not only the cause of the gender gap in politics worldwide, but
also to define whether it is worth fighting to achieve equal number of men and women representatives.
After all, if a gender-heterogenous national legislature does not guaranty an improvement of the gender
gap, why would we care in achieving it?

In the Taiwanese system, when women quotas were installed, many districts saw a double race
for legislators. One general race, where mainly men would win, and a “women race”, where women
candidates would compete in order to get the reserved seat, in the case they would not achieve it in the
general race. This trend would force parties to support and invest in female candidates, and over time
women candidates would compete head-to-head with male candidates in the “general race”, and the
quotas would be surpassed anyways in many districts.

Japan, on the other side, does not have any kind of quota. The only thing the Diet has done in an
effort to push for more women in politics, is when Japanese legislators passed a law that promoted parties
to “voluntarily work on the promotion of gender equality”. This, with no surprise, had arguably little to
no effect in women taking important roles in Japanese politics.

To conclude, we can say although Asia, and specifically East Asia, is a region that is far behind
other regions in the politics gender gap, some countries are doing quite fine and can be a good example
for others to take ideas from. We saw the example of two contrasting countries, such as Taiwan and
Japan, where the first one not only has had a long history of women participation of politics, but recently
modernized its laws and achieved an even more impressive number of women in the unicameral
legislature. Japan, on the other hand, has done the complete opposite. Starting from a history of male-
majority politics, has not done enough to push for gender equality in this aspect. We also analyzed how
Taiwan’s quota system can effectively improve gender equality in politics, as it pushes for less obstacles
for women candidates and more incentives for parties to endorse them, resulting in role-model for the
rest of the region.
External Sources:
 Facts and figures: Women’s leadership and political participation, UN Women
(https://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/leadership-and-political-participation/facts-and-
figures)
 Women in politics 2020, UN Women
(https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/Headquarters/Attachments/Sections/Library/
Publications/2020/Women-in-politics-map-2020-en.pdf)
 Where Do Women Stand in Politics? A Case Study in East and Southern Asia, Political Studies
Association (https://psa.ac.uk/psa/news/where-do-women-stand-politics-case-study-east-and-
southeast-asia)
 Women in Japanese politics: Why so few after so long?, Japan Times,
(https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/03/06/reference/women-in-japanese-politics/)
 Keeping the door open: How Taiwan’s gender quotas brought more women into office – and why
we need more, Taiwan Insight, University of Nottingham
(https://taiwaninsight.org/2021/03/01/keeping-the-door-open-how-taiwans-gender-quotas-
brought-more-women-into-office-and-why-we-need-more/)

Course Sources and Readings:

 https://data.ipu.org/women-ranking?month=10&year=2021