• Last updated:2021-10-18

The president announced amendments to certain provisions within the Act of Gender Equality in Employment on May 18, 2016. These amendments came into effect on May 20, 2016. Important changes are listed as follows:

A．Broadening provisions relating to breastfeeding and pumping of breast milk:
（1） Unification of legal terms, amending “breastfeeding” to “breastfeeding and/or pumping (breast milk)”.
（2） Lactation period of employees are extended to include children under two years old of age. In addition to predetermined breaks from work, the employer must provide an additional 60 minutes for breastfeeding and/or pumping breast milk.
（3） Since each employee’s breastfeeding/pumping times are different, limits on the number of breastfeeding/pumping times have been eliminated.
（4） In consideration of employees’ needs to breastfeed/pump during extended work hours, provisions have been updated to include an additional 30 minutes for breastfeeding/pumping for employees who work more than one hour outside of normal working hours.

B．In order to provide more employees with breastfeeding and child care services and to create a workplace environment friendly to parenting, previous requirements for companies which employ more than 250 employees to have breastfeeding/pumping rooms, child care facilities or other appropriate child care services have now been expanded to include companies which employ more than 100 employees.

C．Since the employer has an obligation to prevent sexual harassments and take immediate and effective corrective and remedial actions as soon as they are made aware of instances of such occurrences, the amendment requires the employer to give the victim of sexual harassment official leave for any court appearances mandated by a judicial authority for any lawsuit(s) resulting from the aforementioned said workplace sexual harassment.

• Source:Department of Standards and Equal Employment
• Publication Date:2016-07-18
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