Tag Archives: japan

To be familiar country with women

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by Sungryoung Yoon

Women’s social progress has been wider since the government decided the Equal Employment opportunity law in 1980. Until then, I guess there was a stereotyped against women that work in society as same as the men. After the Equal Employment opportunity law, the society is getting familiar with the women because some laws were introduced like the law for child-care leave. I can say 1980’s was a big factor of starting the new society for the women. From the reference that I write below page, the number of the household that is made by only men’s employee has been clearly decreased since 1980. I can guess there was effect of the Equal employment opportunity law as I stated upward. The number of the household that is made by only men’s employee decreased around half number from 1980 to 2006 but the number of the household that is made by both men and women’s employee has been increasing since 1980’s. We can see the situation from the reference that the number of the household that is made by both men and women’s employee is more than he household that is made by only men’s employee.

The number of women’s social progress has been increased and the system of society is getting g familiar with women than before. However can we say is the Japanese society really familiar with the women? After the globalization, depression, women would go out of house to work in the society but if they do, who care their children? I think that child care is the biggest problem in women’s social progress because lack of the child care makes declining birth rate and actually the declining birth rate is deeply getting decreased today. Today preschool is one of the big factors for the women’s social progress. A lot of family/ household need preschool to leave their children to work in the society however lack of the preschool is getting serious. Today, the reference says that number of the children who have to wait for entrance to preschool is around twenty thousand every year. If parents cannot leave their children to the preschool, how do they care their children doing work?

One solution to care children is expansion of the preschool but it is not easy because of the lack of nurse also. I think that our society have to start to do new project for women and their children. Second solution I guess is focus on the elders who retires from their work. As I stated below, Japanese society has a problem of the declining birth rate, and we are having increasing elders. I guess there are so many elder people who want to work after their retirement of their work. If we can do this project, it would be good for the women who want to work and the elders who want to work more. However I guess that this project still has problem. Actually preschool needs a license to take care of the children but if we focus on the elders, how should we care them? We cannot let elders do full-dress style of preschool. Also we have to find the elders who have enough strength to take care of children. We still have a lot of problems to care the children and that connects to the women’s social progress. To be more familiar country with everyone, I think we have to try to find the solution.

References

“男女雇用機会均等法”http://law.e-gov.go.jp/htmldata/S47/S47HO113.html  (accessed 2nd on December )

“平成20年度版　厚生労働白書”

http://wwwhakusyo.mhlw.go.jp/wpdocs/hpax200801/b0055.html (accessed 2nd on December)

“平成21年　人口動態統計月報年計（概数）の概況　厚生労働省”

http://www.mhlw.go.jp/toukei/saikin/hw/jinkou/geppo/nengai09/kekka2.html (accessed 2nd on December)

“「保育園不足」を見て見ぬふりの文科省” http://facta.co.jp/article/201003008.html (accessed 2nd on December)

Why are social movements influential for society?

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 by Mayu Uehara

Social movements have been worked to change the structure and environment of society. The famous one is the American Civil Rights Movement in1950s to 1960s and ‘ I have a dream’ speech which Martin Luther King spoke have been passed its story down from generation to generation. Social movements are occurred many times in Japan as well; such as demo for stop working nuclear power plant, problem of U.S military staying in Okinawa and so on. A little while ago, huge demo, which were occurred in China and provided economical impacts to Japan, were also huge social movement. From these social movements, I found there are two features of it and they are about activists and situation. These features make social movements having huge power to change society.

First, activists are not wealthy but socially weak. They often don’t have much power to against social structure. For example, demo in China were incredibly intense and violent and most of them were younger who work at factories with low payment. From my point of view, the reason why they exploded their emotion that much were because they haven’t had enough chances to speak out their complaint and also they have lived under stresses. As other example, the activists of the American Civil Rights Movements were mostly black people who had discriminated by society itself. We can observe that people who try to change structures of society are mostly in powerless position.

Secondly, I think that social movements seldom occur suddenly but they are occurred when people’s stress reached the top and they think they can’t stand any more. We can see this from the social movements in Fukushima. When nuclear power plants were working peacefully, there were not any complaints in Fukushima from its citizens. After they exploded and people who lived close to it were prohibited, they showed anger to government and leaders of corporate. At that point, they were not social movement there. Fukushima citizens got together for social movements when government tried to use nuclear power plant again. They claimed, ‘ We can’t stand being quiet any more. We can’t just look on government’s movement without doing anything.’ Their efforts influence political policy and now most of Japanese party state about finish depending on nuclear power plant in the future. I think this is because government truly felt their angers and also pressure from society.

Above all, for rich people, they can have choices to avoid unpleasant situation by using money, but in contrary, the weak people have to remain under the situation without any choices, therefore, they tend to live under stress and hardly with satisfaction. The more local people have stresses, the more social movements are bigger. Also, many times they are certain leads which stimulate them to explode their complaints. Social movement’s features are these two which I mentioned and that’s why they have great impacts to reshape political policy.

How media gives effect on social movement over Diaoyu-dao issue

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by Rina Terasaki

Variety of social movements happen in worldwide, and also in Japan. As we learned in the class, social movements can bring people’s attention into issues and moreover can influence the public policy. To bring public attentions more and more, social and industrial media act a big role in the movements. One characteristic of media is bias. It only leans to one side or one specific position, and keeps insisting that they are the only right. Sometimes, ironically, media even announce things over and worse than its actual, so that it makes people confused and blindness to other ‘reasonable’ information. So the part taken by media in social movements can be said as very huge.

In this summer of 2012, there happened many movements in Japan and China over the issue of ownership of islands which is called ‘Senkaku (Diaoyu-dao) issues.’ I was on an exchange program to Beijing, China at the time of the beginning of the series of these issues. Many movement were actually happened and also media in not only Japan, China and worldwide also showed them for not a short time. Then, I felt there is happening one thing, but since the difference of information, (and also nationalism and other reason on the background), the recognition among people in these different countries also turns to be scattered. In this essay, I would like to explain the facts of ‘Senkaku (Diaoyu-dao) issues’ from each side and analyze how our recognition of this issue were made.

After Japanese governments’ announce of purchase of the island, in China, not only through the central TV news and newspapers, but also through many forms of medium, it was informed to nations. Sina Weibo, which is Chinese twitter, informed registrants the newest things at any time. This way, the issue was spread to be understood by even people who do not have television and computer. The 19th of August 2012, huge people took part in a demonstration in Shenzhen. People who participated destroyed Japanese things such as cars and shops, and Japanese TV companies kept airing repeatedly this scene on news. As I felt, hearing voices around me, abuseful scene gave people impression of savage, especially to elder people. Also at the governmental phase, the central government of China wrote propaganda on foreign masmedia. Although it seems just like propaganda that has no justifiable data as people say in Japan, through they keep insisting strongly, it can be said that ordinal people’s recognition over the world has been lean toward to Chinese side. This seems similar to what Joseph Caldwell Wylie says the “Cumulative strategy.” I felt media how much effect public opinion. This way, social movements including demonstration and a part of riot would be justified

As I wrote above, Senkaku (Diaoyu-dao) issue consists of ‘image-making’ factor. Although the fact should be one, through media with different position, and their partial strong insists, image that receiving end get would be decided differently.

Resources:

-Beijing news portal. “Shenzhen Diaoyudao Demonstration hurts Japanese Cars” 25.Aug.2012 written by David Cao http://beijingimpact.com/society/2325-shenzhen-diaoyudao-demostration-hurts-japanese-cars.html

-Kaikoku Bouei Journal 29.Sep.2012 http://blog.livedoor.jp/nonreal-pompandcircumstance/archives/50680819.html

Approaching gender equality

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by Mihoko Sumitani

When I studied gender issues in the class, I was thinking about the situation of gender in Japan. Generally speaking, it is said that developed countries tend to approach gender equality better than developing countries. Of course, Japan is one of developed countries. Then, is Japan really approaching gender equality as well as other developed countries?

There is an interesting ranking in The World Economic Forum’s annual Global Gender Gap Report. This report ranks countries according to the magnitude of their gender gap in four keys which are economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment and health and survival. In the report published this year 2012, japan ranked 101st out of 135 countries in terms of the progress it has made towards achieving equality in these four areas. I was quite surprised to see this ranking because there are many developing countries ahead.

However, when we see Japanese society, we will witness the fact that how many men are in administrative positions in both public sectors and private sectors in comparison with the population of women. Indeed, there are some difficulties for women to keep working after they marry and have a baby. The main two reasons are that many companies are not flexible about maternity leave and that there is a gender discrimination of women staying at home and doing housework as well as taking care of their children. Furthermore, Japanese parents still have a strong tendency to make their sons getting higher education than their daughters.

I think we have to change this situation now as we are facing a declining birthrate problem. Reducing the gender gap will have a good effect on companies’ bottom lines and helps to address serious demographic challenges. Actually Japan already put the big step to close Japan’s economic gender gap. New Task Force was launched in cooperation with the Japanese government, business and civil society to close Japan’s gender gap by 10% by 2015 as the initiative of a World Economic World. I hope this attempt will work well and we all people can have diverse choices of their lives and have an equal chance to display their abilities no matter what gender they are.

Reference

http://www.weforum.org/news/world-economic-forum-launches-japan-gender-parity-task-force

Global Gender Gap Report 2012

Gender Norms

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by Mayu Shibata

Many societies have adopted the notion of gender norms in history.　Most of them are such idea as ‘Men working outside the home and women staying at home and holding house.’ Although it is gradually weakening after women’s rights movement, it is still strongly rooting our society in various fields and it’s more likely for developing countries to hold this idea.

The word sex means biological differences between men and women while ‘gender’ refers to just about everything else. It’s related to a custom or tradition. For example, who usually take care of children? Who usually provides the majority of household income? Who usually changes his or her name on marriage? What kinds of toys do boys play with and what about girls? And then, who decided it? If it’s a custom or tradition, what makes them act so is people’s stereotype such as ‘boys should like soccer more than cooking.’ This idea makes us who we are and how we act in a way. If you are a boy, you know how people expect you to act like through talking with mom and dad, for example. You would be likely to be provided with car toys than Barbie dolls. Then you grow up as a ‘boy’ with a sense of a boy. Like this stereotypes and categorizing is everywhere around us and we are tied to them and act as expected.

I, as a woman, don’t think women should be free of house holding and child care even though I won’t be good at it because women have rights to go outside houses and participate in society regardless of marriage but I think biologically women are better at child care in many cases. Of course it’s about one’s personality and we can’t decide which is better but according to physical differences women will do better on average. But I think they at least have a choice. As I mentioned, it’s depend on one’s personality and not one’s sex. On the other hand men who prefer house holding should be welcome and they don’t always have to be the role of working outside. Both sexes have choices. And what suffer them are the stereotypes and categorizing. People see a person who does something different as ‘deviant’ and not all of them are brave enough to take the choice. So I think the most important thing on gender norms is to change the trend. People suffer between own desire and society’s way when they are in troubles. However, they don’t recognize that they are tied to society’s stereotypes until they are in troubles. What is required here is that all people should recognize the unfair restriction and understand that we all have choices of how we live.

Social movements all around the world

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by Mao Shibata

In these times of globalization, social movements become not only domestic movement but also international and world-wide movements. For instance, the Arab Spring that originally occurred in Tunisia and spreading throughout Arab world is one of the largest revolutionary waves of demonstration, protest, and war, which began on 18 December 2010 remain vivid in most people’s memory. Social movements collect particular people to appeal particular thinking or idea, and moreover, people are organized as unity using their social networks and attempt to change or promote their society and politics. To achieve their goals, framing is essential for every social movements.

Framing enable to integrate people together and determine their direction of movements. Furthermore, social movements can incorporate more groups with a broader range of goals and great influence on popularity and public policy.

When I watched the movement against nuclear power plants in Hukushima, I was so impressed and I understood the relation between framing and social movements. I know the concepts of both framing and social movement, however, I was a little bit confused how do they impact on mutually. In the movie, women in Hukushima stood up and started to take action as they want to protect all of their children who live in radiation exposure area and moreover, they feel anger with the government who did not deal with nuclear problem seriously and sincerely. These are the framing. That’s why they decided to take action as social movements. They are now organizing social movement against nuclear plants to attain their goal that abolish the nuclear plants and turn other-not only media but also all citizens- attention to them.

However, social movements sometimes compete with each other and they miss their purpose or goal. What they need is to keep less abstract and more personal and not to focus on only one frame. We usually carry around multiple frames in our head and every people grasp affairs in difference ways. Keep thinking for example, what framing being more successful? Do people convey any clear consisting frame? And carrying on effort to reframe and considering solution lead to achieve their real goal. Social movements act to change political debates, governmental institution and wider culture under their own purpose. Sometime there are some obstacles that are put in their way such as government, police, media or their opposition campaign and it is really difficult to convey their goal to entire world, though they try to promote awareness and action that extends beyond the boundaries of one movement or campaign by pressing and carrying images and words.

Inequality for Women and Men in Japanese Society

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by Misato Okumura

In general, people all over the world say our inequality between women and men are remarkable in Japanese society. This is true. For example we have a little number of female CEOs or any kinds of head of firms, and a lot of Japanese mothers quit their job and stay home when they got their children. Some people don’t quit their job even if they have small kids but the mothers need to do both house and care work and actual work at a company. And most working women are not satisfied with their working conditions and change or quit their jobs. The way to solve this problem is not only offering more works for them and getting them promotions more easily. This is not that easy. For example, if they get them more promotions, it makes them more difficult to leave their job and it will be more burdens for women who have their children at home because they need to do both jobs. Moreover, this is not a disadvantage only for women. It is also unfair for the fathers to spend less time with their children than the mothers do. Then how can we change this structure?

Before we think about this question, I would like to analyze how the structure of Japanese society creates this inequality. I think we have 3 characteristics which influence on this. They are the lifetime employment system, lack of kindergartens and decreasing birthrate and aging population. These problems don’t let us leave the inequality.

First, the lifetime employment system makes it easier for women to leave their jobs. In this system, people can work till they become 60 years old once they got hired. But also, they need to stay working for the company as long as possible to get promotion. This system is not applied to women. So if they need money, men need to work and women need to take care of children at home.

Then what if mothers want to go working rather than to stay home and raise up their children? Basically, they leave their kids at the kindergarten during their working. But this is difficult because we don’t have a lot of kindergartens in each community and almost no kindergarten at company. To make the matter worse, some people don’t have enough money to leave their kids there.

Moreover, our society is aging and losing young people every year. The number of elder people is increasing every day. And these people think that women should stay home to do care work and men should earn enough money to take care of this family. In short, the number of people who have this idea is huge. This makes it difficult to share care work between women and men.

In conclusion, Japanese unique social structure has created an inequality between women and men. I think we need to establish more public kindergartens and hire more teachers and to make the opportunity to let elder people and young people share and understand their ideas in order to change our social structure.

What is gender equality in Japan

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by Ayaka Nishizaki

Gender inequality has been one of controversial topics for a long time in many countries as well as Japan. This time, I would like to think and mention gender inequality in Japan.

During my class, I learned an inequality of work opportunities for women in some countries. I heard that women’s job opportunities have increased than before, but women still have to do house work because of traditional idea and women will be more burden than men. I understood that is called gender inequality. However, I felt gender inequality cannot be said from only that point. This is because the meaning of the inequality is different in each countries’ situation, and I wondered ‘what does gender inequality mean in Japan?’ When it comes to say gender inequality, the premise that women are responsible for taking care of children and doing house work always seems to be rooted in Japanese Society. I think that premise is only women’s side. For a long time, while women have been thought as domestic worker, men have been thought that they have heavy responsibility for work to support whole members of family. The number of men who commit suicide is higher than that of women because of pressure of work. Also, if men want to do care work, it is difficult to do because support system from government and companies is not enough. In my opinion, there is not only inequality of burden for women but also inequality of care work opportunities or pressure working for men, but Japan has seems to highlight women as a most part of gender inequality to date.

Today, Japan society faces difficult situation because Japan regarded gender inequality as women’s side inequality, I think. Recently, women’s job opportunities have increased by gender equality movement, but at the same time, married couples have difficulty in keeping life balance. there are few opportunities to do care work for men because Japan didn’t think gender inequality from men side. Therefore, women can’t ask men to do house work while men have no choice to work at companies and they can’t help care work. When we improve gender equality, the important thing is to keep life work balance so that married couple can keep good relationships. I realized that even if some movements or measures for the inequality are made, if these actions are composed of only one side view point, it will just create ‘time squeeze’ I learned in my class, Thus, my opinion is that when Japan takes some actions for improving equality, Japan society should think gender inequality from both women and men sides.

Promoting Super Dads and Permitting Normal Moms

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by Ayaka Nakamura

One of my Japanese American girl friends told me, “I hate the idea ‘equal rights’ between men and women. Why do I have to work like a man? I just want to marry someone and be a mother.” I was surprised, as I had always wanted to have a professional job and be treated in the same as men. She continued, “Who on earth did start to talk about equal rights? I want to go back to mom’s generation! Then, no one would blame me for not having a job.” Although I had not thought about the equal rights in that way, I could understand what she was saying. She was afraid of working in the same conditions as men because she wanted to have a child, so that a happy marriage was the only way to realize her desire. It is actually too tough for women to have a job with being a great mother at the same time. Equal right discourses having a place in Japan are about promoting women’s rights and giving the same amount of opportunities in job hunting, which would be good for those who want to work like men but not for those who want to enjoy being women. Also, this type of equal rights does not let men to enjoy their fatherhood either because raising children is still entrusted to women and embedded in women’s rights. Although the Japanese government declare equal rights, gendered ideologies and norms still remain vital. Therefore, some women, such as my friend, are having struggles between expectations for powerful women and the reality of women. The government set the equal opportunities, but women often have different life styles from men because male and female are different and only female can give a birth (I would like not to touch arguments about trans-sexual here), so that different approaches to realize the equality within considerations of gender differences are necessary.

We cannot ignore existing gender ideologies, such as women are supporters of men, women are inferior to men, women are emotional and illogical beings, and child caring is women’s job, which have been continued within this patriarchal society. We cannot skip any steps to realize the equality. It seems that giving equal opportunities is an idea of “gender-neutral society” in which people do not have gendered fetters and only one’s ability is a criterion of a judgment. Yet, Japan obviously has not reached that point, so that it has to aim for “gender-understanding society,” as the first step, in which people accept the differences of sexes and gender roles and aim to get equal results. Also, at this point, people understand not only that women have been victimized and had lower statuses at work, but also that men have been marginalized from child caring and forced to work outside.

In order to realize gender-understanding society, I believe education would play a key role to develop people’s new norms. Current Japanese schools are saturated with gendered ideas. From my experiences, girls’ bathrooms were more beautiful and had more mirrors than boys’. Girls had different P.E. curriculums. Girls were expected to perform better than boys in home economic (kateika 家庭科) classes. Boys were expected to perform better than girls in science and math classes. Girls were more likely to go on to language majors at universities. Scientific schools (rikei 理系) were full of boys. Most of English teachers were women while math teachers were men. All art history professors were women at American University in Washington, D.C. As to job hunting, mostly men got in a career course (sogoshoku 総合職) and women in a non-career course (ippanshoku 一般職). These examples seem to prove that Japanese gender ideologies are generated in children’s minds from elementary schools to universities. Therefore, it should be changed. All students and teachers have to be aware of gender norms and gendered decision-making processes. Having a lecture about gender at elementary school level would help children to have more equalized and neutral ideas about their future. Moreover, ability-based, not gender-based, curriculums and advices would give students wider opportunities to find their best field.

However, only education would not be enough for a gender ideology reform. Politics that promote gender-understanding society would be necessary. Ikumen 育メン, which can be translated to cool fathers, project has started with supports of the Ministry of Health Labour and Welfare of Japan. According to its website, the projects aim for increasing the percentage of paternity leave from 2.63 % to 10 % by 2017 and 13 % by 2020.[1] I believe this project is worth to try for both purposes: to release women from child caring roles and to let men fulfill their fatherhoods. Moreover, companies’ supports by establishing a new paternity and maternity leave system are essential to produce ikumen and to achieve gender equality. Equal start lines that only force women to work like men do not bring reasonable results, thus companies must let women have a paid maternity leave that can cover their living for a limited time. Also, accepting mothers and fathers who have worked at the companies as part-time workers while they need a certain time for childcare. Those part-time workers should be able to have salaries at the same rate as full-time workers. I believe the experienced part-time workers are more worth to hire than a new graduate full-time worker who have not got any skills yet. Although giving a paid maternity leave is an expensive solution for companies, contributing society will end up bringing benefits for them, too. Many people would choose more flexible and more secured companies to work with than old-fashioned companies that use women as tea servers and fire pregnant workers.

If educations are improved and society understands gender ideologies and norms, then the number of female workers will increase and women will get more independent and free lives, and someday the society could achieve the real gender equality appreciating equal start lines. Yet, the change would not come in one or two years because the whole patriarchal system has lasted for hundreds of years and is a part of Japanese culture. Gendered ideas construct the bases of its society. Therefore, ikumen project and other gender equalizing projects must be kept going until we see the change in next generation. I hope, in the future, there are more super dads who are evolved from ever-at-work dads and normal moms who are released from pressures of being super moms.

[1] “育メンプロジェクト” Ministry of Health Labour and Welfare of Japan.　http://ikumen-project.jp/project/index.html

Gender Structure in Working Place in Japan

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by Asako Morita

Gender role has been considered as a part of culture and behaviors of people tend to be based on gender role. In Japan, historically men have worked outside and women have been housewives. This family structure is recognized as common sense so many workplaces are not well prepared for women to work long and secured. Because of the whole structure, women are easy to be in an economically vulnerable position. In this short essay, I would like to seek Northern European countries where more women have well advanced in society and what systems can fit in Japanese system.

In Japan, lifetime employment system has been normal and once you quit a job, it is hard to get a job which has as same as the previous condition.  However, with the onset of cataclysmic changes in the economic climate in 2009, employers began laying off and dismissing massive numbers of non-permanent workers and workers employed on a part-time or contract basis for periods of less than one year. Compared to regular employment, non-regular employment is able to receive limited company’s benefit package and unsecured. In Japan, about 60 percent of women quit jobs after they get married or give birth and afterward, they only have option to work as a non-regular or part-time workers. Because of the common sense of gender role, men tend not to do housekeeping or child caring but working as a breadwinner. It means only super women can raise children and work at the same time.

On the other hand, in Northern European countries, even though most women work as non-regular workers, they are satisfied with the job condition and they are able to handle both raising children and working since non-regular workers can work flexibly. The biggest difference from Japanese system is that non-regular workers are also well secured and they can receive a good benefit package from company. Therefore, most women choose to take non-regular jobs and they do not have to give up anything. Other difference is how long men contribute to family and households. I think one of the reason is working hour of Japanese men is too long and not enough time to be at home.

Surely it is difficult to fit the whole system of Northern European countries to Japan. However, I think Japanese working environment has way less flexibility and it hinders the entrance of women into the workforce. Now it is essential to create more flexibility at workplaces and expanding career switch market for both women and men’s opportunity for balancing work and family.