Taiwan: Legislative Yuan Passes Amendment to Gender Equality Education Act

Taiwan's Legislative Yuan passed amendments to Article 27-1 and Article 30 of the Act for Gender Equality in Education (Act) on 5 January 2022.

Before the 2022 amendment, Article 27-1 of the Act stipulated that schools are required to check to ascertain whether teachers or non-teaching workers have ever committed sexual assault, harassment, or sexual bullying before being employed by the schools. However, the Teachers’ Act prohibits the hiring of a teacher with a record of violations of the Sexual Exploitation of Children and Children Regulations.

The Teachers' Act only regulates teachers, and the relevant stipulations in the Teachers' Act do not apply to non-teaching workers at schools. Therefore, the amendments stipulate that before a school hires non-teaching workers, in addition to checking their records for sexual assault, sexual harassment, and similar offenses, a school must ascertain whether a prospective employee has a criminal record for offenses of the "Child and Youth Sexual Exploitation Prevention Act".

In order to prevent teachers from making unjust decisions due to their co-worker relationship with a teacher who has committed any of the above-referenced offenses, the Legislative Yuan revised the Gender Equality Education Act in 2018 to stipulate that all members of the investigation committee for gender equality cases can be hired outside of the school.

However, because the Administrative Supreme Court has ruled that the text of the 2018 amendments do not have a retroactive effect, a possible result is that investigation committees composed entirely of external councilors before 2018 could be deemed illegal or invalid. The 2022 amendments thus expressly stipulate that the rules regarding the composition of investigation committees have retroactive effect, and also that the rules be applied to investigation committees composed entirely of external councilors before the 2018 amendment.