Women In Lighting Taiwan and China organised a workshop on the evening of June 24, 2022, in Taipei, Taiwan, which was sponsored by Forma Lighting and its local partner Konson Trading Co., Ltd. The workshop attracted 30 participants; mostly female lighting designers based in Taiwan.
The theme of the workshop was “Expectation”, with the aim of introducing the WIL organization, the development opportunities WIL has offered to women in the industry, and to invite more designers to support WIL’s goals. The event gave participants deeper insight into the WIL project and collected topics of interest from them for future events.
The workshop was opened by Ya-Hui Cheng, a WIL Taiwan ambassador, who introduced her educational and professional background and how she became to be involved in the WIL project. Ya-Hui argued that, because of unconscious gender bias in her society due mainly to family background, men receive more opportunities in the Lighting industry than women do. Ya-Hui highlighted how the WIL project aims to create opportunities for women in gaining industry experience, including judging and speaking at lighting awards and events, whilst also supporting the emerging generation of women designers to achieve their goals. Ya-Hui also introduced the 8 March WIL Global gathering and the WIL Awards, the result of the UK Gender Equality Survey in the lighting Industry by Carmela Dagnello, and finally encouraged workshop participants to join and support WIL in their endeavors.
The next to present was Jenna Liu, in her capacity as the WIL China ambassador, to highlight the work WIL performs in China. Jenna explained that, whilst WIL provides opportunities for women to succeed in the Lighting industry, they also need male supporters in the process to assist in achieving equality between men and women. Jenna ran workshop participants through the process of navigating and finding information on the WIL website and mentioned that WIL also celebrated International Men’s Day on 19 November as part of their equality program. Jenna promoted activities on the Chinese social software wechat, welcoming Chinese people to join.
During the break, both ambassadors had workshop participants fill out gender equality survey questionnaires, to help WIL gain local data.
The workshop ended with a Question-and-Answer session, with all participants actively engaged in the discussion. Topics of discussion included: understanding what participants feel and think about the industry, the various opportunities for women to increase their chances of making public appearances, and suggestions on various lighting installations in Taiwan that could be improved. Finally, a survey was taken of participants’ expectations for subsequent WIL activities.