Gender Quotas in Taiwan: The Impact of Global Diffusion

Two things distinguish Taiwan from other Asian countries regarding women's political representation: a high level of female political representation by Asian standards and an early implementation of quotas by global standards. Women constitute 33.6% in the country's parliament, second in Asia only to East Timor (38.5%). Taiwan has also achieved a higher level of women's parliamentary representation than Japan (8.1%), South Korea (15.7%), and Singapore (23%). Unlike other young democracies that adopted gender quotas in the 1990s or even later, Taiwan has had reserved seats for women since the early 1950s when the country was under authoritarian rule. Quota reforms were later instigated subsequent to Taiwan's democratization.