Presenting Economics Research in Taiwan as a Woman

When I went to Taipei to present at National Taiwan University, I carried the practical confidence of an academic and the situational uncertainty of an expatriate moving through a new professional culture. The experience I want to record under the title Expat Life: My Experience Presenting Research at National Taiwan University as a Woman in Economics is not a simple story about travel or public speaking. It is about how place, language and professional identity affect the reception of research about women’s entrepreneurship.

My academic base is at Kyoto University, where my work includes interviews with Japanese women founders and analysis of the gender funding gap in Japan’s venture-capital landscape. At the university in Taipei, those private conversations became a public academic exchange: I had to explain the evidence and why questions about women’s access to finance belong in economic research. I also had to notice the assumptions operating in the room, including those I brought with me.

Arriving with two research frameworks

Taipei was the beginning of a longer journey between academic systems rather than a neutral backdrop for a talk. In Kyoto, I had built the project through repeated conversations with founders, many of whom spoke from direct experience of starting, funding and scaling a business in Japan. In Taipei, I entered as the person presenting those conversations to students and researchers. That shift changed my task from eliciting careful testimony to making a research framework legible without flattening it.

The clearest way to see the shift is to compare the two settings across method, audience and responsibility.

Dimension	Kyoto University interviews	National Taiwan University presentation
Research setting	Private, founder-led conversations	A public academic session
Primary aim	Gather lived experience and identify patterns	Explain patterns and invite scrutiny
Format	Semi-structured interviews	Slides, argument and audience questions
Main challenge	Listening without leading the account	Answering without assuming a universal experience
Immediate outcome	Interview material and analytical themes	Discussion, challenge and methodological cautions

Neither format was automatically more rigorous. The interviews offered depth and ambiguity, while the presentation offered speed and visibility. Because the presentation followed the interviews, I could use details to show how an economic mechanism becomes visible in a person’s story, rather than presenting gender as a loose collection of personal impressions.

From interviews into a research conversation

My working account of the venture-capital theme appears in my gender funding analysis. The research investigates how access to networks, deal flow, information and investor assumptions may shape funding outcomes for women founders. It treats gender as an economically relevant characteristic embedded in institutions, not as a separate story detached from capital allocation.

For the Taipei audience, I had to distinguish the Japanese setting from the Taiwanese and broader regional context. Japanese firms operate within particular funding networks, industrial structures and policy debates; Taiwan has its own investor base, technology sectors and entrepreneurial history. The comparison was therefore useful for asking better questions, not for claiming that one market simply reproduces another.

I also had to be precise about what the interviews could and could not establish. A founder’s account can reveal a financing barrier that aggregate figures may hide, but it cannot, on its own, measure the size of a national funding gap. Presenting both kinds of evidence meant explaining their different claims clearly and resisting the urge to make a compelling story sound more certain than it was.

Preparing to speak in Taipei

Preparation began with ordinary expatriate logistics: flights, a temporary apartment, local transport and the time required to turn a year of interviews into a coherent presentation. The MRT made daily movement predictable, while convenience stores and small food shops near the university made meals possible between working hours. The routine was simple, but it created the continuity needed for careful rehearsal.

The less ordinary work involved translating concepts for people who knew the regional context better than I did. I prepared short explanations for terms such as venture capital, follow-on funding and gender gap, then tested whether each definition answered a likely question. I also anticipated requests for evidence and kept details about participants anonymised. Being a visiting researcher meant being precise about methods and appropriately modest about interpretation.

On presentation day, the formal setting sharpened a familiar tension. Slides can protect a speaker by placing claims in sequence, but they can also make a complex argument appear finished. I used pauses, examples and visible caveats to leave room for disagreement. The session became less about delivering a sealed conclusion than showing how economic research can remain rigorous while staying open to challenge.

When gender becomes visible

A title can change how authority is assigned before the first chart appears. As a woman presenting economics research on women’s entrepreneurship, I was aware that my subject position and professional identity were both visible. The central experience was not an overt confrontation; it was the accumulation of small moments in which the audience decided whether I was a specialist, an interested observer or a symbol.

Questions sometimes moved quickly from evidence to explanation. I was asked why women founders encountered difficulty, which could imply that women were the problem, while my actual interest lay in how markets and institutions distribute opportunity. I responded by returning to the mechanism: what stage of the business was being discussed, which investors were present, and what information they used. It was a modest act of agenda-setting, but it kept the analysis focused on systems rather than deficits.

Expat life also included the small digital detours that fill rooms between commitments. During one late-evening break I opened a page about an online roulette bonus and compared its advertised risk with the far less theatrical language used in venture-capital meetings. The comparison was silly and useful: both rely on framing, although funding decisions affect founders’ businesses, households and capacity to employ people.

Translating the experience for Australia

Australian readers will recognise some of the setting through contrast. Sydney and Melbourne contain much of the country’s visible startup activity, yet their professional cultures are distinct: Sydney’s harbour city identity and Melbourne’s cafe-heavy inner-city routines shape different kinds of workday. Commuting is also part of local professional habit, whether that means tapping an Opal card in Sydney or a Myki card in metropolitan Melbourne. These small details influence where conversations happen and how informal those conversations become.

The local venture-capital market deserves the same care I applied in Taipei. Australian investors may work with companies shaped by domestic consumer markets, research universities and local industry networks, so funding patterns cannot be imported wholesale from Japan or Taiwan. What can travel is the method: examine access to networks, the evidence used in decisions and whether alternative applicants were considered. Australian women founders can then discuss their own conditions rather than serve as examples of someone else’s national story.

There is also a legal layer. Australian companies raising capital and undertaking governance sit within the Corporations Act 2001 and the oversight of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. A research partnership hosted through a registered charity may also encounter requirements administered by the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission. These frameworks affect documents, accountability and the time founders must spend on compliance, making regulatory literacy part of entrepreneurial work rather than an administrative afterthought.

Readers who want the wider context can consult my research portfolio, which brings together the founder interviews, academic projects and expatriate writing. Keeping these pieces in one place matters because the presentation, the funding research and life outside the university are not separate identities; they shape the questions I choose and the care I take in answering them.

Carrying the work forward

The lasting lesson from Taipei was to treat identity and context as part of research quality, not decorative background. Presenting to an audience with its own market knowledge forced me to state the limits of Japanese evidence, separate mechanisms from anecdotes and make room for the audience to test my interpretation. It also showed why work about women founders should be economically specific and institutionally attentive.

I will write a two-page research brief that compares the questions raised in Taipei with the funding conditions facing women founders in Sydney and Melbourne.