Everyday Work, Everyday Gender: Women Employees' Experiences in Taiwan

This feminist study explores professional women’s everyday experiences of gender in the workplace in Taiwan. As previous research indicates, compared to women in other East Asian economies, such as those of Japan and Korea, women in Taiwan have a more consistent career trajectory. In addition, the local women’s movement and activism has brought Taiwan a long way in improving women’s employment rights in the workplace. However, a substantial body of literature also shows that it is too soon to claim that gender inequality has been banished from the workplace. Applying ethnomethodological and symbolic interactionist perspectives, this project aims to investigate gender inequality at work by focusing on women employees’ everyday experiences. The qualitative, in-depth, semi-structured interview is adopted as the main method to generate research data, while feminist theories on gender and heterosexuality serve as a foundation for the analysis. Through an exploration of the participants’ accounts, gendered and heteronormative practices at work are examined in two contexts: organisational management and everyday social encounters. Within management practices, women employees tend to be regarded as homogeneously marriage-oriented and family-oriented and are therefore assigned certain jobs and positions accordingly. As for social practices, the heteronormative and gendered social order is sustained through common everyday interactions, such as appellations and general communication. As the structural and institutional factors affecting gendered arrangements are discussed, personal experiences in negotiating gender are also revealed in the participants’ narratives. A deviant misfit self is constructed by some participants as a means of mobilising agency in situations that disqualify or discriminate against women employees.