Contested Gender-Regime Transformation: Negotiating Public Gains and Private Inequalities in Democratizing Taiwan

This article advances gender-regime theory by conceptualizing Taiwan as a case of contested gender-regime transformation. Engaging post-Walby scholarship and the stalled gender revolution thesis, it examines how socioeconomic modernization, democratization-enabled feminist mobilization, state selectivity, and entrenched familist norms have shaped Taiwan’s uneven gender trajectory. It argues that Taiwan’s transformation cannot be explained by modernization, legal reform, or changing attitudes alone. Feminist mobilization translated democratic openings into reform, while selective state incorporation and family-based welfare arrangements mediated its uneven effects. These dynamics sustained private-sphere inequalities, including unequal caregiving and the motherhood penalty, even as women achieved public gains in rights, education, employment, and political representation. Extending stalled revolution insights to the regime level, the article shows how public gains and private inequalities remain institutionally decoupled yet mutually constitutive, making gender-regime transformation an ongoing, recursive process of reform and resistance.