Dissent on the conclusions made in the “ Experts Meeting on the Usage of Sex and Gender” called by the Department of Gender Equality, Executive Yuan on January 22, 2021 (Taiwan)

 Yenlin Ku  2022/11/24

(retired and working professor of women and gender studies, former and present member of government gender equality committees, former chair of Awakening Foundation, etc.)

I’m the “gender expert holding different opinions” in the 2021 meeting the Department of Gender Equality (DGE) referred to in its response to the issue of translation of sex and gender between Chinese and English. In that meeting I submitted the suggestions made by the Bi-lingual Translation Committee of the National Academy for Educational Research (NAER) at my formal request. Unfortunately, the suggestions were turned down in favor of the original decisions made by the DGE and its experts. Here are my standpoints:

1. The 3^rd CEDAW IRC (International Review Committee)’s concern that “the inappropriate conceptual and practical use of the terms ‘sex‘ and ‘gender‘ in Taiwan” does exist and has caused confusion and damage to the government, society and education. 

 2. I support the IRC’s suggestion that “The term’sex’ refers to biological differences between men and women. The term ’gender’ refers to socially constructed identities, attributes and roles for women and men and society’s social and cultural meaning for these biological differences resulting in hierarchical relationships between women and men and in the distribution of power and rights favoring men and disadvantaging women.＂

3. I believe the IRC’s recommendation that “the Government to align all the legislative texts and policy documents and promote the correct and consistent understanding of the terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ in line with CEDAW Convention and the Committee’s General Recommendation No. 28.” is urgently needed in Taiwan today.

4. Underneath is a chart combined of translations made by the DGE and the NAER for the sake of comparison:

NO.	Chinese	DGE’s translation	NAER’s translation
1	性別	Gender	gender (psychological/social) sex (biological)
2	性傾向	Sexual orientation	sexual orientation
3	性侵害	Sexual assault	sexual assault
4	性騷擾	Sexual harassment	sexual harassment
5	性霸凌	Sexual bullying	sexual bullying
6	性別認同	Gender identity	gender identity
7	性別特質	Gender traits	Sex trait(s)/ characteristic(s) (physical) Gender trait(s) / characteristic(s) (心理)
8	性別歧視	Gender discrimination	sex-based discrimination; sex discrimination; gender-based discrimination;  gender discrimination
9	任一性別[1]人數(代表)不得少於三分之一	Neither gender should occupy less than one-third of the seats of the committee/commission	Members of each sex shall constitute no less than one-third of the membership of the committee/commission.

 5. Furthermore, I agree with the recent recommendations made by the IRC’s reviews on human rights conventions in Taiwan: 

Terminology and Translation 

30. The Review Committee expresses its concern that confusion is created by the incorrect translations of certain terms from English to Chinese and Chinese to English, such as equality and gender diversity. In particular, the Committee is concerned that the Chinese term ‘平等’ is translated as both equality and equity, as shown in the Gender Equality Employment Act and the Gender Equity Education Act. Also, the Committee is concerned that gender diversity is translated as ‘multiple sex’, which is not correctly conveying the meaning of diverse gender. 

31. The Committee recommends that the Government solve this problem by only using the term ‘equality’, changing the English title of the Gender Equity Education Act by replacing ‘equity’ with ‘equality’ and applying the correct translation for gender diversity and other terminology involving gender. The Committee recommends that the correct terms and their meanings are commonly understood by government agencies, media and the general public. 

Review of the Third Reports of the Government of Taiwan on the Implementation of the International Human Rights Covenants

Concluding Observations and Recommendations adopted by the International Review Committee 

ICESCR｜經濟社會文化權利國際公約

ICCPR｜公民與政治權利國際公約

Taipei, 13 May 2022