This study adopts in-depth interview to interview with seven 20-25-year-old young Hakka women whose parents are both Hakkanese. With three aspects－frugality, obedience to husband and assiduity, this paper aims to examine traditional Hakka women’ characteristics revealed by these young Hakka women’s grandmothers and mothers from their observation. Based on the observation, this paper also compares and analyzes the similarities and differences between the images of traditional virtues and the real life portraits of traditional Hakka women. Furthermore, different from past studies focusing on the reflection on traditional Hakka women themselves, this study attempts to get further understanding of how ethnic identity affects young Hakka women’s viewpoints toward their own identity.
The findings show that the differences of language and frugal concept from other ethnic groups make these young Hakka women have negative attitude toward their ethnic identity. By contrast, the good impression traditional Hakka women make on others builds a new cornerstone of ethnic identity for them. However, doubly living in Taiwan where female consciousness has improved these years and in families where their grandmothers and mothers have significant influence on them, these young Hakka women’s ethnic identity therefore becomes very contradictory. In the future, with fast rising and flourishing of female consciousness in Taiwan, this contradiction to traditional virtues will continue to weaken the Hakkaness of young Hakka women.