Organizer: Samuel Hideo Yamashita, Pomona College
Chair: Lynne K. Miyake, Pomona College
Ayumi Miyazaki, Harvard University
Teacher. "Boys of class one and two! Get in the pool!" (Boys jumped in and swam. Girls waited on the poolside.)
Teacher: "OK! Girls of class one and two, get in!" (Girls jumped in and swam.)
This is one excerpt from my fieldnotes jotted down at a elementary school in Japan. Sex grouping was one of the main groupings at the Japanese elementary school. Separation of girls and boys was taken for granted by teachers.
Although American researchers have recently become interested in the groups formed at Japanese schools, they have not dealt with sex grouping and its function in gender socialization. Their primary interest lies in Japanese collectivism compared with American individualism (Peak 1990, Lewis 1984). Peak observed Japanese preschools and concluded that teachers trained their pupils in proper group behavior for Japanese society. Other researchers (Stevenson and Stigler 1992, White 1987) explained how class organization, including grouping, contributed to the higher achievement of Japanese students. White wrote how han (small working groups) contributed to students' high achievement in Japan. American researchers, however, overlooked various types of groups and functions of groups in Japanese schools, including how groups are used to segregate by sex and perpetuate stereotypes.
Why do Japanese teachers divide girls and boys so often? Is it their intention to socialize girls and boys differently? Is dividing by sex due to the Confucian tradition? This paper will examine what kinds of groups the teachers used, how they divided children into sex based groups, and how teachers explained why they so often divided girls and boys. I also will show how these groups contribute to the gender socialization of children.
Research Methods:
I conducted my research at "S" elementary school in Japan. Although my entry to the elementary school depended on where I could gain access, I intentionally chose to conduct my research in a public school. In Japan, most children go to public elementary schools where teaching and curriculum are fairly standardized. "S" elementary school held 19 classes and 668 pupils. Class size was 35 on average. Among the 19 teachers who were each in charge of a class, thirteen were female and six were male. "S" school was located in the suburbs of Tokyo.
I spent five and a half days a week for three months at the school from the beginning of July to the end of September in 1989. Although from the end of July to the end of August is summer recess, they had swimming classes at school and I continue to observe and talk with teachers. In the last week of my research, I interviewed teachers formally. Each interview took fifteen minutes to one hour.
In July, I observed every aspect of the school lives of first and second grade children. As I found that teachers often divided children by sex, I decided to focus on how teachers formed groups by sex and why they did so. Because the academic classes of Japanese elementary schools use whole class instruction most of the time, I observed mainly non academic classes and other activities such as P.E., music, moral education, and home economics. I used a tape recorder for the interviews. I videotaped twelve classes.
Results:
Types of Groups
In the interviews, teachers said that they tried to create diversity in terms of ability and sex within a group when they formed groups. Han was a basic group for academic activities and other activities such as setting the table and cleaning up classrooms. Teachers said that they formed han so that each han did not differ much in ability and the proportion of girls and boys.
Teachers did not do ability groupings except for swimming classes. On the other hand, they often divided pupils by sex. You could see division by sex in numerous aspects of daily school life. For example, teachers formed pupils into lines by sex in the morning meetings or when they moved from classrooms. School regulations required red study materials for girls and blue ones for boys.
Function of Groups
Why did teachers divide children by sex so often? In order to understand this taken for granted fact at school, I asked the teachers if they could do without sex grouping in one class. I chose swimming classes where I knew from previous observations that teachers used sex groupings very often. Contrary to my expectation, all the six teachers I asked willingly accepted my request. As one teacher's class was canceled because of weather, I observed five classes. All but one teacher taught their classes without problems. One teacher began to divide children by sex without thinking. She got very confused when I pointed this out, so I asked her to continue to use sex based grouping. She, however, said in the interview after the class, just as the four other teachers did, that there was no problem with not using sex based groupings.
I found, however, that the classes differed from usual classes in that teachers needed to correct pupils and repeat what pupils should do more than usual. One example from the class is the following.
T1: (Made mixed groups and lined children up)
T2: (Exchanged some children between groups)
T2: "We are going to do it this way today!"
T2: "OK? Be sure which line you should be in!"
T2: "OK! Splash twenty times!"
(Pupils in the front line splashed the water twenty times sitting on the poolside, and then got in the pool and began to walk. Soon after that pupils in the second line began to splash.)
T2: "Not yet, not yet!"
Thus, in the swimming classes, teachers had to do more to control pupils because they did not use the sex based groups they usually used.
How teachers explained why they used sex based grouping:
Teachers themselves explained in the interviews that sex based grouping was for controlling classrooms. Only four teachers said that pupils needed sex based groups because of gender socialization: "Boys and girls should have different standards and socialization." "If we mix boys and girls, they will be sexless." "If we mix boys and girls, they will have sex too early." Twelve teachers out of sixteen said that they used sex based grouping because it was useful for controlling pupils and not because it was based on sex. The following are examples of answers from these teachers:
At "S" elementary school, I observed that teachers patterned pupils behaviors to smoothen activities of a large number of pupils. For example, teachers trained pupils for the school sports festival to sit down on hearing one whistle, to stand up with two whistles, and to be quiet when they heard three whistles. They also trained pupils to form groups quickly. Sex based grouping was useful for controlling pupils, because teachers could use pupils' knowledge instead of training them over each time.
These teachers, however, said that because they used sex based groups as just a random category, not a tool of gender socialization, they could replace them by other groups without problem. But while many teachers said there could be other ways of grouping, why didn't they actually change it? In the interviews, some of the teachers said that name lists were divided by sex with boys prior to girls, and that administration of classrooms was done based on the name list. Teachers were so busy taking care of more than 30 pupils every day that it was difficult for them to change their habits.
The other reason teachers continued to use sex based grouping is that many teachers did not think that sex based grouping was discrimination. In the interviews, they said that they treated girls and boys equally. As many teachers did not think sex-based grouping was contradictive to equality, they did not have incentives to change their way.
Conclusion-Gender Socialization
It turned out that teachers explained that they used sex based grouping not because they intended to socialize girls and boys differently, but because it is useful for controlling pupils. Sex based groups, however, generate gender socialization. First, it is actually impossible for teachers to treat girls and boys separately and equally. I observed that teachers treated girls and boys differently. For example, boys carried buckets of water and girls decorated their classrooms. Moreover, sex based grouping causes teachers to perceive girls and boys differently. In the interview and observation, many teachers compared girls with boys. Many times their comparisons fell into stereotypes of girls and boys.
In the observation, pupils got used to the division by sex as they entered higher grades. Pupils began to divide themselves by sex. Two teachers realized that sex groupings resulted in gender socialization. One of the teachers said, "At various times, we say, 'Boys, do this, but girls, do that.' We may sometimes need to do that, but if we do that unnecessarily, kids will think, 'Boys and girls are different. Boys and girls always act in different groups.'"
Thus, sex based grouping at a Japanese elementary school contributed to gender socialization, although teachers said that they used sex based grouping just to control pupils. This research confirms that frequent grouping of students at this Japanese elementary school functioned to do more than socialize pupils into group behaviors. Grouping also taught students that the two sexes are treated differently.
Carol J. Kinney, Harvard University
Although there are several good studies of women's roles in Japanese society [Brinton (1993), Ozawa (1993), Fujimura Fanselow and Imamura (1991), Lebra (1984)], no studies have examined individual adolescents and their decisions about work, schooling, and other aspects of their futures. This research examines young women in two lower track Japanese high schools and their plans for their futures. Because this research focuses on lower track students, many of whom will become working class adults, it provides insight into the lives of young women who do not have the opportunities to enter non traditional professional careers. Rather, these students are becoming part of the less securely employed working class in small and medium sized companies in Japan. This group, like adolescent girls and young women, has not been studied or discussed as much as have more permanent workers in Japan [Cole (1973) and Kondo (1990), are two of a few exceptions], so is less well recognized as an important part of Japanese society.
This research is based on a fourteen month ethnographic study of students at two lower-track high schools in the Tokyo area. Students were observed at school with special attention paid to how the school socialized students to prepare for jobs or further schooling and how students envisioned their own futures. Two classes of approximately forty students each were also surveyed four months after graduation and will again be surveyed in December of 1994 to learn more about their job experiences. This paper is the beginning of a lengthier study that will follow a sub sample of these youth over the next few years of their work lives. Basic information about the size of firms entered, wages earned, and the content of work are compared to Tokyo and national data about the work experiences of high school graduates. Because these students are entering jobs from lower track schools, their work opportunities are also somewhat lower status. I consider how students accommodate themselves to lower status work and sometimes redefine their goals to value physical labor and other types of work that are generally not highly valued in Japanese society.
This examination of young women's decision making in their last year of high school and first year at work or further education reveals the complexities of youths' decisions. In particular, the paper emphasizes the differences in how girls and boys view their work and how these differences are both encouraged by the school and parents as well as ignored in most discussions of how jobs are found. Through the analysis of group interviews and follow up survey information, the paper presents a rich picture of the contradictions both girls and boys face when they consider entering a career that is not stereotypical for their sex. Teachers' messages to students are also examined for both the surface messages of gender equality and the deeper societal expectations that girls have short term careers that will end at the time of marriage or child birth, even if many of these young women will need to continue to work for financial reasons.
Although there are several studies of British and American young women [for example, Gilligan (1982), McRobbie (1978), Holland and Eisenhart (1990), Weis (1990), Fine (1991), Anyon (1984)], there are, to date, no studies of adolescent girls in Japan that are published in English. This research begins to remedy this situation, and thus allows a first comparison of the effects of the choices made by adolescents in Japan with those made in Western countries. In addition, the paper also provides insight into how the specific opportunity structure that women in Japan face limits their goals and futures. Because this study focused on a co educational school and also examined boys and their plans, girls' decisions are placed in the more general context of their class position, their academic abilities and degrees, and their view of their future economic earnings. Thus, this multidimensional examination of their roles as lower track, often low-income, girls adds depth to the study and illustrates how social barriers and constraints to achievement and educational opportunity affect students in multiple ways, depending on their class, their gender, and their academic placement.
I conclude that neither socialization, reproduction nor production theories fully explain young women's complex responses to the opportunities and expectations they face. The schools present girls with a mostly equal education while preparing them for sex specific job openings. Within friendship groups, individual girls hold differing opinions about the role work and family will play in their futures: some hope for the chance to be full time housewives while recognizing this might be financially difficult, some say they never want to marry and would prefer not to have children, and some hope to combine family and a career. All of the young women were aware of societal discrimination against women, although a few stated that they still believed it was easier to be female than male in the current society. Thus, socialization to be "feminine," was accepted or rejected to various degrees by individual girls.
Similarly, while some girls admired their own mothers either for both working and raising a family or for being a housewife who was always available to them, others hoped to choose the opposite path from their mothers. Class and the ability to imagine a more or less economically comfortable life style determines girls' expectations for their futures more than does their gender alone. For example, girls whose families could afford further education sometimes hoped to marry a man whose salary could fully support their hoped for future family, while girls whose family's economic situation was forcing them directly into the job market were more likely to say they planned on working at least part time throughout their adult lives. Girls seemed extremely aware of the constraints on their choices that were due to either sex roles or class position. Overall, I examine how Japanese young women see themselves and their position in society and examine these views in the context of the opportunity structure that will shape their futures.
Amy Borovoy, Stanford University
In the midst of the Japanese Government's promises to deregulate the economy, a radical proposal to permit self serve gasoline stations (currently prohibited) has become a symbol of state regulation of the economy at the expense of the consumer. The prospect of a lone consumer gamely filling his own gasoline tank threatens to subvert Japan's dominant post war political ideology that Japanese consumers have consciously, "willingly" traded lower consumer prices, a more spacious and luxurious standard of living, and leisure time in exchange for quality, safety, and impeccable service-those amenities that purportedly derive from membership in a "unique" cultural polity of like minded constituents who prioritize hard work, discipline, mutual sacrifice, and attentiveness to detail. The current pressure on Japan by the international community to reduce its trade surplus by promoting domestic consumption is challenging this tacit privileging of "service," "quality," and loyalty to the collectivity by suggesting a prioritization of the citizen, the consumer, the individual. One implication is a re configuring of Japanese notions of gender, home, and nation.
This paper considers the changing role of women and the construction of the "domestic sphere" in the context of contemporary international and domestic criticism of Japan's regime of production. The need to spur domestic demand-and to emerge as a mutualistic member of the global community and not simply the "world's wallet"-has powerful implications for women as keepers of the domestic sphere: (1) As managers of household budgets, women are being encouraged to reconsider traditional ethics of frugality and self sacrifice in favor of "enjoying life," and pursuing leisure and other commodities. Thus the definition of the "good wife and mother" is being revised; (2) Women's labors in the form of the Japanese "service ethic" (diligence, interpersonal indulgence, attentiveness to detail) and the "safe haven" of the home or "uchi" have quietly compensated for and sustained the rigorous and demanding systems of Japanese business and education. The new prioritization of consumerism and individual entitlement blurs the boundaries between "domestic" and "public" or "inside" (uchi) and "outside" (soto) and calls attention to this division of labor; (3) Finally practices of consumption disrupt economies of self deprivation that accompany the Japanese kinship system (which remains culturally influential), whereby wives and mothers are compensated later in life for their enduring self sacrifice and the prioritizing of others over "self."
The data for this paper were collected during 1992-3 while I worked as a participant observer in a support group for women who were family members of substance abusers. The weekly meetings were modeled after American Al Anon meetings. Theories of "codependence" and "recovery" were interpreted to make meaning of these women's dilemma as Japanese women, and practices of consumption of goods and entertainment were constituted as antidotes to traditional constructions of "the good wife and wise mother." The paper will feature excerpts of (verbatim) narratives from these meetings. In conclusion I suggest that while new regimes of consumption are changing what it means to be a good wife and mother, they are also complicit with new state sponsored agendas of nationhood and do not threaten to overturn status quo sexual divisions of labor.
Sarah Pradt, University of Minnesota
Although the number of people with HIV or AIDS in Japan is relatively small, as a discursive phenomenon, AIDS has been extremely important in Japan. Medical knowledge about the biology and transmission of HIV and about the progression of and treatments for AIDS has been widely circulated in this information-rich society with few taboos against frank discussion of sexuality. AIDS is stigmatized in Japan, as elsewhere, and as in the U.S., gay men and hemophiliacs have been labeled as especially at risk and as especially dangerous. But in the last few years, women have increasingly become the focus of blame for the presence of AIDS in Japan. Southeast Asian prostitutes working in Japan have for several years been described as central to the "spread" of AIDS in Japan, but more recently, young unmarried Japanese women have been accused of acquiring AIDS abroad and carrying disease back to Japan and like foreign prostitutes, are seen as a vector by which HIV and AIDS enter an otherwise pure island nation. Focusing on tabloid weeklies, TV, and the "non-fiction" reportage of Ieda Shoko, I examine the demonization of female sexuality in Japan under AIDS, specifically, the ways that young Japanese women's sexuality and economic power have become the target of criticism that is defined or disguised as concern about AIDS.
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