The Spatial Analysis of Female Political Power in Taiwan

• Main Authors: Chang, Rae, Jui-Ling, 張瑞玲
• Other Authors: Chang, Chun-Lan
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/13736248786719698978

碩士 === 高雄師範大學 === 地理學系 === 98 === In recent years, more and more female presidents and government leaders have appeared internationally. Female politicians stand out conspicuously by means of their profession and ability. While the past research about female political participation mainly focused on analyzing the influence of background factors instead of discussing the neighborhood effect as an influential factor, a spatial analysis method based on GIS (Geography Information System) database, has become notable and also offered a new point of view to the research of female political participation. The amounts of nationwide female geographic research are few and the past researches mostly adopt the case study method to analyze female circumstance. In this study, quantitative, large-scale and comparative methods are used to increase the understanding of the whole aspect of female political power and circumstance in Taiwan. This study explores female participation and performance in public official elections in Taiwan during 1986-2008 and processes the data with ArcGIS software to reveal the temporal and spatial variations. Moreover, this study also discovers spatial characteristics of female political power development in Taiwan through Visual Analysis, ESDA and Spatial Regression. The purposes of this study are as follows: 1. Discuss the female political power development in Taiwan as compared with other nations. 2. Explore the temporal and spatial variations of the female political power development in Taiwan. 3. Understand the spatial factor of the female political power development in Taiwan. This study reveals that the female political power development in Taiwan has caught up with other nations in recent 15 years, even has been ahead of other nations. In domestic comparison, the percentage of female participation in public official elections in Taiwan has made big progress, especially in single-member electoral type such as legislators, councilmen and etc., which obviously shows that the district magnitude significantly influences female political participation. 1998 was the year that female participation in public official elections in Taiwan grew explicitly and it also responded to the reserved-seats system for women in DPP (Democratic Progressive Party), which inspired female participation in politics and impacted the political environment directly and indirectly. Furthermore, the single-member district and two-vote system (SMD-TVS) was implemented in legislative election in 2008, which impacted female district legislators. Overall, female legislative seats are still rising. The temporal and spatial variations show that the phenomenon of female participation in public official elections in central and southern Taiwan, including Taichung County and City, Nantou County, Yunlin County, Changhua County and Chiayi County and City, is less than Taipei-Keelung Metropolitan Area but more than the southern area constructed by the neighbor counties around Kaohsiung City. However, the distribution of female participation in local village and borough elections is quite different compared to other public official elections. Based on the average of participating and elected candidates, the female participation of Taipei-Keelung Metropolitan Area, Direct-controlled Municipality and Provincial City is the highest; the participation in eastern counties is superior to western counties. Under overall evaluation, the female participation in northern Taiwan and Taipei-Keelung Metropolitan Area is more active and the development of political power is relatively higher as well. The development of female political power in Chaiyi is spotlighted in southern Taiwan. Relatively, in Shinchu County, Miaoli County, Ilan County, Tainan County and Penghu County, female participation in politics and development of political power are weak. In the spatial clustering analysis of female political development, the clustering level isn’t high and distributes randomly. We can only conclude from the limited spatial information which is: 1.the female political participation in township and city mayors present the steady “cold area” in the north and the moving “hot area” in the south. 2. the relationship between the female political participation in township and city mayors and areas is negative. In the related analysis of spatial factor, socio-economic variable and the correlation of female political participation are at lower level, however, the socio-economic conditions of high education level, high income, high ratio of third industry, low population of elder people point out the characters of urban area and also reveal that the level of female political participation in urban area is higher. To conclude, the result through the implementation of SLM (Spatial Lag Model) shows that the level of female political participation to the spatial neighborhood effect is weak.