ABSTRACT
This chapter explores why the trajectory of the women's movement during Taiwan's democratic transition was sharply distinguished from that of the labor and environmental movements, shifting from nonpartisan to partisan. It highlights activists as the key component of analysis by examining how their biographical profile influenced the repertoire of organizational modes, tactics, and issue choices in changing institutional settings. Compared to labor and environmental movement activists, activists in the women's movement came disproportionately from the upper class. Publishing houses, social service organizations, and foundations were the primary organizational models adopted by the women's movement before the era of liberalized elections. The Taiwanese women's movement entered a new era of "politics with parties" with the changing political opportunity in 1994. The winning of the Taipei city government by the Democratic Progressive Party gave the women's movement a chance to shift its strategy from politics without parties to politics with parties, as Clemens observed of the early US women's movement.
