If, as many expect, the Democratic Progressive Party's Tsai Ing-wen is elected as Taiwan's next president this weekend, she'll become the island's first female leader. Given that Taiwan granted suffrage to women less than a decade before the 59-year-old Tsai was born, that in itself would be a remarkable achievement.
What's equally striking is the contrast to China, which regards the island as a renegade province. Not only has modern China never had a female leader, but unless deeply ingrained cultural and bureaucratic barriers are lifted, it's also unlikely ever to do so.
That picture would seem to contradict early Communist ideals, which embraced a shared revolutionary burden in which women, in Mao Zedong's words, held up "half the sky."