Satomi Sugiyama
GWS220W-02
Professor
Adriane Brown
2/24/2012
Paper 1 – Women
in the World
If You Were a Japanese Today
Japan
is a small country located in Eastern Asia, which is surrounded by oceans. The
capital city Tokyo, where there are thousands high-rise buildings, has been
developed under great influence of Western culture. The country still holds
unique traditional cultures today such as clear difference of expectations for
men and women. Some of them interrupt women in Japan to be treated equally. Japanese
women are currently suffered from the balance of working, taking care of
families, and social expectations.
Although
the gross area of Japan is relatively small compared to the other countries,
its population is ranked as the 10th in 2010 as reported by the United
Nations Population Fund.
According to Official Statistics of Japan, in
2011, the total population of Japan is 127,816,000 (Statistics of Japan). The statistics shows
that the population is about forty percent of current population while the
gross area is only thirteen percent of American population. The Ministry of Internal
Affairs and Communication estimated the population of Women in Japan is 50.6%
of the total population in 2011 (Statistics of Japan).
Japanese
has been facing the danger of aging society and decreased number of children,
and it leads an economic collapse in Japan. In these years, demographic aging in Japan is
often highlighted. One of the reasons is that Japanese women have the longest
life expectancy over the world. In 2009, life expectancy at birth for Japanese women
was the longest in the world at 86 years (Seager 16). On the other hand, there
is another problem raised at the same time. The rate of total fertility rate
has shown a dramatic decrease over the last sixty years. The Penguin Atlas of
Women in the World summarized each Japanese woman has only 2.1 or fewer children
(Seager 34).
Some
researchers argued that another reason of declined birth rate is the trend
toward the nuclear household because of lack of person who do housekeeping. Most
men do not participate in housekeeping and bringing up their children, which is
regarded has been a women’s job traditionally. Japanese used to live together
with grandparents to take care of each other until a couple of decades ago. However,
most current families especially in urban cities are nuclear families. For
instance, my family is a typical nuclear family: a father, a mother, me, and my
younger brother. While I lived with my family, I have never seen my father
doing house keeping works. So did my friends’ fathers. One day I asked him why
he does not do anything for housekeeping including taking care of children, he
answered, “It is your mother’s job.” This was more general than today,
expectation for a mother. Although my mother had a part time job, she did
everything for my family. I am still wondering why mothers should be like that
as if they were slaves of family. As a result, it accelerates for Japanese
women to have fewer babies who worked as enough as Japanese men.
Japanese
women’s participation in society has been increasing, yet there are some difficulties.
Statistics Bureau of 2009 released by Ministry of Internal Affairs and
Communications describes, 42% of the labor market is made up by women in Japan
(Statistics Bureau Japan 133). According to Catalyst 2011, “In 2009, only 48.5%
of women participated in the labor force (Catalyst 1).” In fact, only until recently,
the percentage of women’s participation risen as the women educate themselves in
past few decades or so. “In 2009, the highest rate of participation for women
was 77.2% for those aged 25-29; in comparison, 98.1% of men aged 30-39 were in
the labor force, the highest rate for men (Catalyst 1).” That is because many
women quit jobs after they were married, and they do not tend to get full-time
jobs again.
Japanese
women often realize something disappointed soon after they graduate from school,
specifically universities, and start working. First, the representation of
Japanese women in business is low compared to the United States. According to
the Corporate Gender Gap 2010 by World Economic Forum, the percentage of Japanese
women in private companies is only 24% in 2010 although American one is 52% (Zahidi
and Ibarra 5). Second, the report also states that only 1.4% is women among board
directors of Japan’s top 100 companies (Zahidi and Ibarra 66). In addition, the
total number of companies claimed that, , on average 16% in the world, 10% of the
business-critical important positions held by women in Japan (Zahidi and Ibarra
11). Obviously there is no equality between women and men, though Japanese
government enacted the Equal Employment Opportunity Law for Men and Women since
1986. Also, working women in Japan cannot cope with both their jobs and
childcare without grandparents’ support due to day care deficit.
In
addition to the gap in nongovernmental workplaces, there is also a big
political gender gap. Women’s suffrage was admitted legally in 1945 whereas a
man’s in 1925. It seems common over the world that women’s representation in
government is less than 30% (Seager 96). The Penguin Atlas of Women in the
World shows Japanese women’s representation in government is 5% to 14% (Seager
97). In the current Noda administration, there is only one female minister, the
Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare. The lack of representation have no
development on women’s lives because it is women who understand women. If the
number of women in politics increased, it would increase, I assume, the number
of laws to protect women. Are there any specific reasons why Japanese women do
not represent socially and politically? Certainly I
believe that cultural and historical factors play a big role on current women’s
lives.
Japan
is one of the countries which have the longest proven histories in the world. It
was late seventh century when the country declared itself “Japan” during Zito
Tenno who was the 41st emperor of Japan (Current Hirohito Tenno is
the 124th.) In the long history, women’s social rank has been
changed sometimes positively and negatively. It is the philosophy prior to nineteenth century that still influenced
on current people’s expectation of how women should be. Traditionally
women have been taught to behave gracefully in manner and protect inside of households while
men have been taught to gain honor outside of
households. This value has been still kept women as labor force from companies.
According to Women and Men 2010 edited by Gender Equality Bureau, Japanese men
spent time on housework and child care at the lowest level on global basis (Gender
Equality Bureau 13). Especially, women are recommended to quit jobs after
marriages and the first childbirth. Many companies are not willing to hire
mothers especially who have young children or teenagers. From my personal
experience, I was asked by an interviewer of a company six years ago, “Do you
have a baby?” If I had a baby at the moment, I am sure that the company would
have not hired me. Therefore, having children keeps women from getting jobs and
staying companies. It is another reason why birth rate is dramatically
decreasing. As Japanese women represent socially, companies require women not
having a baby if the women want to keep working for a long time. In big cities
in Japan such as the Tokyo metropolitan area, there are a number of mothers who
have bachelor degrees and qualified as many professional positions but do not
have full-time jobs. An example here is my mother. She gave up having
professional jobs to raise me and my younger brother when we were small. Since
we were a typical nuclear family and my grandparents lived in a five-hour-drive
away, she could not get any supports from others. She also faced the difficulty
of finding a daycare in the neighborhood, so she sent off my brother to distant
daycare center. Teruko Kagohashi, a professional Transcultural
Education/Parenting Consultant worked in Japan, the United States and many
other countries, explains:
Due to the time
and age constraints, working mothers are less likely to use kindergartens. In
fact, as dual income families and nuclear families become common, admission to
daycare centers has been accelerating noticeably in recent years, albeit a
decrease in the number of pre-school age children [three to five-year olds]… In
response to various changes in the environment around children and families,
and more importantly, to halt the declining birth rate, … there are so many
so-called ‘waiting children,’ who need to enter a daycare center, if both
parents work for example, but cannot, particularly children of you ger ages
and/or in urban areas. … Demand [of
daycares] has been skyrocketing even faster, and supply is not catching up with
the need of many desperate parents (Kobayashi).
Everyday it took an hour and a half each way.
Many women have the same experience as my mother even now.
Japan faces a lot of issues about women’s representation; however, the
status of women prior to nineteenth century was much worse. Since the old
social system was centered by men, there was no law to protect
women’s
status at all. During those days, there were two Japanese feminists who devoted
themselves to improve social women’s rights: Raicho Hiratsuka and Fusae
Ichikawa.
Raicho
Hiratsuka was a writer and a pioneer of feminist in Japanese history. Her
journals discussed women’s issues including female sexuality, chastity, and abortion. In Japan, sexuality should not be
opened on public because sexuality is considered as shameful issues, so it was a
big impact on readers in those days. In 1920, she formed a feminist
organization called New Women’s Association with her follower, Fusae Ichikawa, who
pioneered for the improvement of the status and welfare of women (Fujimura and
Kameda 5). Their activities resulted in overturning on regulation of the
freedom of speech to join political organizations and hold or attend political
meetings. Later on, Hiratsuka funded another organization in 1963 for women’s
rights ---- New Japan Women’s Association, which was granted Special Consultative Status by the United Nations
Economic and Social Council in May 2003 (New Japan Women’s Association).
Fusae
Ichikawa is another feminist and a women’s suffrage leader of New Women’s
Association that was against laws that kept women from participation in politics.
After traveling to the United States to meet American women’s suffrage leader
Alice Paul, she founded the Japanese first women’s suffrage organization, the
Women’s Suffrage League of Japan that held a national convention for women’s
suffrage in Japanese history ever (New Japan Women’s Association). Finally,
Ichikawa’s campaigns succeeded in the granting of full suffrage for women in
1945. If she and her supporters had not succeeded at this time, it must have
taken longer time for Japanese women to represent in politics. That is because
the Korean War broke out in 1950, so people’s attention switched their campaign
to the war close to Japan.
Japanese women face many difficulties to improve the equality and keep
the balance of job and childcare in these days. Some of the reasons come from
cultural and historical inequalities. It seems difficult to improve women’s
status in Japan’s current situation, but certainly, there were women who did
not give up and fight for the improvement of women’s status many decades ago. Their
activities encourage Japanese women today to think about how they can also
fight to improve women’s rights.
Work Cited
Catalyst. “Women in the Labor Force in Japan.” Catalyst.org. June 2011. 6
February 2012.
Fujimura, Kumiko. Kameda. Japanese Women: New Feminist Perspectives on
the Past, Present and Future. 1 December 1994.
Gender Equality Bureau. Women and Men in Japan 2010. 2010. 6
February 2012.
Kagohashi, Teruko. Shortage of Daycare Centers in Japan. 2004. 24
February 2012.
New Japan Women’s Association. 2008. 6 February 2012.
Seager, Joni. The Penguin Atlas of Women in the World 4th ed.
London: Penguin Group, 2009.
Statistics Bureau Japan. “Labor.” Statistical Handbook of Japan 2011.
2011. 6 February 2012.
<
www.stat.go.jp/english/data/handbook/index.htm >.
Statistics of Japan. Population Estimates by Age – August1, 2011 (Final
Estimates), January 1,
2012 (Provisional estimates). 20 January
2012. 6 February 2012 <http://www.e-stat.go.jp/SG1/estat/ListE.do?lid=000001085495>.
Teikoku-Shoin Co., Ltd. “Gross Area.” Teikoku-Shoin.co.jp. 6 February 2012
Zahidi, Saadia, Ibarra. The Corporate Gender Gap Report 2010.
Cologny/Geneva: World
Economic Forum. 2010. 6 Feburuary 2012.
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