At the 2017 Women’s Rights and Gender Equality Creative Publicity Activity held this 28th, the Taichung City Government (TCCG) invited three women bosses to share their experience and opinions in entrepreneurship. According to Director General Jian-de Lu of the Social Affairs Bureau, the rise of women entrepreneurship and employment rates has become a new trend in recent years. Although women entrepreneurs have developed an outstanding career, they are often addressed as “lady boss” instead of “boss” due to the female stereotype. Lu hoped that the activity can promote the gender equality concept to more people, and the government will continue to help career women keep their work or start up a business and create a living environment friendlier to women through subsidization, child daycare, and adult daycare policies.

In addition to Director General Lu of the Social Affairs Bureau and Rui-ru Huang of the Taichung City Gender Equality Committee, TCCG invited DOGA Director Wei-chen Lee, one of the Ten Outstanding Young Women, to share her road to success from a “bankrupted expert” to a business owner making NT$8 million a year; CEO Wan-jun Liu, a store expansion expert, of I-Ma Care Enterprise Co., Ltd. to share her experience in expanding her business from 8 stores to 53 stores across Taiwan; and Director Xiu-qin Yeh of Taichang Hakka Women’s Association of Dongshi who created a career in the fertilizer market in a male-sovereign Hakka agricultural society.

Director General Lu says, men are traditionally the financial support of a family, while women do the chores. As time goes by, however, the labor force participation rate of women in Taiwan has risen to over 50% since 2012, and most working women have developed a career in their workplace. In addition, after the rise of the education standard and the loosening of the gender stereotype, and as internet technology advances and the entrepreneurial barrier is lowered, increasing women are standing up to pursue their own career. Currently, 35.8% of SME owners are women, suggesting womenomics is rising rapidly in Taiwan.

Therefore, apart from the Youth Startup and SME Loan Plan and the Catch Star Taichung Startup Subsidization Plan, TCCG has launched a child daycare and adult daycare integrated policy in the social investment concept to facilitate women employment and entrepreneurship, hoping to create a friendlier living environment for women.

Rui-ru Huang of the Taichung City Gender Equality Committee says, the five entrepreneurial strengths of women are: greater friendliness, greater flexibility, greater patience, great tenacity, and lesser self-esteem problems. With only a friendly incubation environment and the no-surrender courage, it is not difficult for modern women to develop a career and make achievements.

According to the Social Affairs Bureau, survey results show that up to 66.8% women are interested in entrepreneurship, but only 19.1% of them will practice it for a number of reasons: lack of self-confidence, high entrepreneurial barriers, lack of business skills, and the traditional concept of “legacy for men”. In results, most women entrepreneurs start their business from nothing, and 98.8% of their businesses are SMEs.Furthermore, as family care is still a burden of women, the entrepreneurial rate of married women is always lower than that of single or divorced women, only 44% of husbands support their wives to start up a business in real action, and 7.4% of husbands even disagree with the entrepreneurship of their wives.

The Social Affairs Bureau says, TCCG will continue its efforts to create a friendly social environment for womenomics through policy promotion and awareness education to disseminate gender equality awareness to every part of daily life and the city.