|
Words speak louder
than gender
By Hsu Yu-fang 許又方
Entertainer Pai Ping-ping (白冰冰) let her tongue get the better of her in her
address on Dec. 18 at a campaign rally for President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who is
seeking re-election, when she apparently implied a causal relationship between
Thailand electing a woman prime minister and the disastrous flooding it suffered
soon after. It seemed her remark was clearly intended to suggest that voters had
better not cast their ballots for Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)
presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), otherwise Taiwan could be struck by
some kind of disaster.
It was a bizarre thing to say and, not surprisingly, Pai has drawn a lot of flak
for her comments. Even Ma, in whose support she was speaking, has called her
remarks inappropriate.
In another recent incident, a well-known media pundit reported comments he had
heard from people in the south of Taiwan about the allegations that Ma’s Chinese
Nationalist Party (KMT) has been making about Tsai’s involvement with TaiMed
Biologics, formerly known as Yu Chang. The southerners said that the KMT was
using its state powers to implicate Tsai in the Yu Chang affair and that this
was clearly a case of “bullying our Taiwanese women.”
Meanwhile, some women’s groups have united to form the “I Want a Female
President Alliance,” with the aim of getting people to respect and pay more
attention to women.
People all tend to focus on Tsai’s gender.
If I were in Tsai’s place, I definitely would not be happy to see voters
concentrating on my gender, while ignoring my abilities. This single-minded
perception of Tsai implies a “special attitude” toward women, not what one would
expect from people with a mature grasp of democracy. Tsai would probably like to
tell everyone: “Please, don’t make a big thing of my gender. Tsai Ing-wen is
just Tsai Ing-wen, OK?”
Pai suggested that women are potential bringers of disaster. The sympathy that
people from the south and civic groups have expressed for Tsai is based on the
preconceived idea that women are the weaker sex and are therefore deserving of
overbaked empathy and special treatment.
Both these views about women reflect traditional attitudes that value men and
boys more highly than women and girls.
When this kind of attitude is applied to a presidential candidate, it can lead
people to exaggerating a woman’s achievements. For instance, people say things
like: “It’s really impressive that a woman could reach such a high position.” It
can also lead people to hold a woman candidate in contempt and ignore her
abilities. Pai’s remark is a typical example of the latter.
The result could be that Tsai wins votes because people sympathize with her as a
“disadvantaged” candidate. Equally, if people get the idea that Tsai would
attract disasters, she could lose votes because of silly prejudices.
If we judge a candidate on appearances only, how can we elect a leader who is
really capable of taking the nation forward? To take gender as the basis for
deciding whether or not a candidate is suitable as head of state is no less
ridiculous than judging whether people are good or bad according to whether they
are considered beautiful or ugly. It seems our society has still not shaken off
the shackles of this kind of superficial mindset or escaped from traditional
attitudes that underestimate women — at least not in our collective
subconscious.
Could it be because most people are conditioned by traditional attitudes and
constrained by appearances that elections in Taiwan cannot be conducted
according to the ideas candidates put forward, how they perform in policy
debates and what they have achieved in or out of government? Is that why
candidates always try to win votes by dirty tricks designed to denigrate their
opponents? No wonder the recent debate between KMT legislative candidate Chiu Yi
(邱毅) and independent pan-green candidate Chen Chih-chung (陳致中) was so
acrimonious, with both men using issues to do with women to sling mud at each
other.
It looks as though candidates are not the only ones to blame for the fact that
Taiwan’s electoral culture has got stuck in a rut and never seems to improve.
Shouldn’t voters also take a long hard look at their own grasp of democratic
principles?
Everyone these days is more or less agreed about equality of the sexes; so
please, everyone, let’s just forget that Tsai happens to be a woman. Instead,
let’s scrutinize her learning, knowledge and experience and then decide whether
she is capable of taking Taiwan forward.
In other words, let’s judge Tsai in just the same way we judge Ma.
Hsu Yu-fang is associate professor and chairman of Sinophone literatures at
National Dong Hua University.
Translated by Julian Clegg
|
