國立臺灣大學政治科學論叢

Abstract / Chinese PDF Download

Reserving seats for women in elections was stipulated in the Constitution of the Republic of China in 1946, and this constitutional practice has enjoyed historical continuities after the Republic of China government moved to Taiwan. As an institutional design, the reserved seats stipulation fits the contemporary discourse on the politics of difference. Theories of the politics of difference, however, are products of the new social movement of the 1960s in Western countries. The reserved seats stipulation in the Republic of China’s constitution therefore, comparatively speaking, was a pioneering practice of the politics of difference. Previous studies on how the reserved seats became a constitutional stipulation tends to regard it as part of the struggle for women’s suffrage. However, fighting for the rights to vote is different from fighting to have the opportunity to be political representatives.

How did the idea of reserved seats emerge as a political appeal? The current literature does not have a clear answer for this question, but most studies show the emphasis of the difference between men and women emerged as a political discourse in the mid-1930s. This paper traces the history of the women’s suffrage movement since 1911, when the Republic of China was established, and argues that the critical moment came in 1924. Influenced by the socialist thinking since the May Fourth movement and his policy on accommodating the Chinese Communist Party, in the mid-1920s Sun Yat-sen came to a different view on how political representatives should be elected. In 1924, when Sun called for a national conference and suggested that the conference should have delegates from nine different social groups, he made a major departure from the previous practice whereby representatives were mainly elected on a regional basis. It was the linkage between the social groups and political representation that prompted feminist activists to campaign on recognizing women as a social group. The campaign led to the emergence of the discourse on the politics of difference, and eventually to the constitutional stipulation on reserved seats for women in elections.