Taiwan has a complex history with feminist and women's rights movements, marked by periods of progress where feminism and strong female icons flourished, as well as periods of strict authoritarianism that devalued equality and individual rights. Thanks in part to the efforts of generations of feminists, Taiwan is now one of the most gender-equal countries in Asia, consistently outranking its East Asian neighbors in international gender equality indices (ranked 6th globally by the Gender Inequality Index in 2019 and 29th globally according to the government's own calculations based on the Gender Gap Index in 2020).^{[needs update]}

At the beginning of Japanese Colonial Rule, the government was in some ways more progressive than Taiwanese society. The Bureau of Social Education in the Japanese colonial government proposed policies to curb abuse and trafficking of adopted daughters, specifically to strengthen protection of such children and launch campaigns to raise awareness of such issues. In the same period, elimination of foot-binding was announced by the Japanese government in 1914. During the 1920s, the colonial government was relatively tolerant of political dissent, allowing the first autonomous women’s movement in Taiwanese history to flourish.

Throughout the 1920s, progressive Taiwanese intellectuals and students published numerous articles to raise awareness on women's issues in the Taiwanese society. In 1921, fearing Japanese assimilation, the Taiwanese Cultural Association, a Taiwan petition movement demanding the formation of a local parliament, was founded. Many intellectuals traveled through Taiwan to raise public awareness about women’s rights and labor-related issues. Additionally, they opposed the trafficking of women and advocated for gender equality and universal suffrage. According to Doris Chang, the goal of the movements was to achieve the emancipation of Taiwanese women from colonial domination, patriarchal oppression, and capital exploitation.

As the New Culture movement occurred in China from 1915 to 1923, raising awareness of modern culture to replace the concepts of certain Confucian conducts, Taiwanese intellectuals were influenced by progressive ideas and eventually launched Taiwan's own New Culture Movement in the 1920s. During the movement, articles challenged the inferiority of women in the traditional Confucian system, stating that Heaven provided equality among both men and women, and advocated human rights. Intellectuals reinterpreted the concept of heaven and legitimized men and women’s common humanity and gender equity. Such new culture advocates also advocated women’s independence in marriage and family. A female intellectual, Su Yi-chen, urged women to resist any marriage coercion where parents force their daughters into unwanted marriages. She believed that marriages should be done freely between two individuals based on mutual respect and opinions.

Thus, from the 1920s to 1931, enhancement of gender equality and women’s status was promoted on Taiwan’s social and political grounds, including revisions to certain concepts in Confucianism.

Due to the industrialization in Taiwan in the mid-1920s, labor disputes increased between Japanese capitalists and Taiwanese laborers. Mostly female strikers protested against undesirable working conditions, unequal wages between men and women and more. Left-wing organizations such as the Taiwan Farmers’ Union and the Taiwan Communist Party promoted women’s rights, meanwhile regularly giving speeches awakening women farm laborers to unite with male laborers to go against Japanese capitalists. Such movements were helped by the Taiwan Cultural Association which in fact led to a military strategy for achieving independence from the Japanese empire in 1928.

While some autonomous women’s associations have succeeded in their movements, many feminist activists were aware of capitalists’ exploitation of women laborers. Compared with the revolutionary goals of the Taiwan Farmers’ Union and the Taiwan Communist Party, the goals of certain autonomous women’s associations were relatively moderate and reformist. Apart from promoting women workers’ rights and feminist movements in Taiwan, they enhanced in exchange of ideas and knowledge, also providing emotional supports among members between several association groups.

Ultimately, autonomous women’s organizations in colonial Taiwan were relatively short-lived due to intervention of the Japanese colonial government, which in the 1930s started suppressing left-wing women’s movements and social and political organizations that supported them such as the Taiwan Cultural Association and Taiwan Communist Party.