[ Panels by World Area Main Menu ]
[ View the Timetable of Panels ]
Japanese Women: Crisis, Continuity, and Change
Organizer: Daniel P. Aldrich, Harvard University
Chair: Susan J. Pharr, Harvard University
Discussant: Mary C. Brinton, Harvard University
The last few years have seen an explosion in scholarship and popular interest on women in Japan. Ranging from sexual harassment suits to debate about Imperial succession laws, recent events have elevated the importance of a subject most observers previously paid only scant attention to. Adding to the urgency of discussions of Japanese women have been regular government pronouncements over declining fertility rates which have sunk beneath 1.26 children per women and birth rates which have declined to less than 9 births per 1000 persons. Women and men are marrying later than ever before, with men close to age 30 and women close to 28 at their first marriages. Along with the Imperial Family and broader demographic trends, lawsuits and litigation over sexual harassment, or seku hara, have also multiplied. Studies have shown explosion in discourse on previously "silent" issues like domestic violence (Chan-Tiberghien 2004).
This panel explores the intersection of politics and gender through an investigation of Japanese women’s roles and political situations. Through a variety of methodological approaches, ranging from constructivist to case study to large-N analysis, these papers explore the current situation of women in Japan. Martin explores the delay of marriage by woman as a political statement, Mikanagi focuses upon the construction of gender in Japan, Aldrich and Kage demonstrate potential convergence in women’s and men’s judgments on political statements, and Gaunder examines the cultural and institutional obstacles Japanese women candidates face when running for office. Through a variety of approaches our panel will shed light on a key issue in contemporary Japan.
Mars and Venus, Revisited: Long Term Trends in Judgment by Sex-Differences
Daniel P. Aldrich, Harvard University
Scholars have long debated whether women and men hold different orientations, especially on issues of ethical, moral, and political judgment. Carol Gilligan, for example, popularized the position that women speak with a different “voice,” whether about political situations or ethics. While folk wisdom portrays women as less likely to participate in mainstream political events and less trusting of politics and politicians, a growing body of evidence produced mixed results concerning this issue. Many previous studies have stumbled over issues of cohort effects and a lack of systematic, over-time data which could impact analysis of survey responses.
This study uses a series of large-scale surveys in Japan undertaken beginning in the late 1970s and continuing on into the 21st century to explore how women and men view politics and feel trust (or distrust) about their local and national representation. We investigate whether or not the thinking of women and men converges as they age along with the impacts of period and cohort effects. Controlling for education, income, and other demographic factors, we find that regardless of the time period in which they lived, or the era in which they were educated, women and men over time come to hold very similar positions on political issues. This finding has important implications not only for policy issues but also for standard wisdom about a large “gender gap” between women and men in Japan.
Gender and Political Candidacy in Japan
Alisa Gaunder, Southwestern University
In Japan all candidates are said to face three main obstacles—jiban (building a constituency), kanban (the need for publicity), and kaban (money). How do female candidates challenge these obstacles and do they face any additional obstacles such as the cultural expectation to be a “good wife and wise mother” that inhibit their ability to run for office? Moreover, are the constraints female candidates face in Japan unique or do women in other countries face similar constraints?
This paper addresses these questions by developing a comparison of the institutional and cultural obstacles female candidates face when running for national office in Japan and United States. It also seeks to understand how these obstacles are challenged by female candidates and organizations that support female candidates in each country. This investigation reveals that the obstacles facing female candidates in both countries are quite similar. Moreover, a comparison of campaign organizations such as WINWIN and the Ichikawa Fusae Foundation in Japan and EMILY’s List, the Wish List and the Woman’s Campaign Fund in the United States illuminates several similar strategies for getting women elected at both the national and local levels. Overall, the campaign organizations in the United States have been more successful due to their ability to connect contributions to specific policy issues. In Japan such campaign organizations face the norm against donating money; these organizations also do not have a unifying ideological commitment other than the broad notion of gender equality.
The national rate of (re)production: women & gendered discourse in Japanese policy-making
Sherry L. Martin, Cornell University
Women’s under-representation in political and economic life sustains views that a “feminist consciousness” has evolved slowly in Japan. In the absence of widespread collective actions by women for women, few political scientists have explored women’s agency in reshaping gender role norms. The “Japanese style welfare state” offers a point of entry for talking about how women’s concerns as a group have been stifled and bound up in the common good. In Japan’s strong male-breadwinner, female caregiver state makes transfers to groups rather than individuals. Women who shirk their social security functions pose a threat to the common good and national security. Young Japanese women threaten the (re)production of the nation by delaying marriage and childbearing, opting instead to stay at home where they evoke mass criticism for parasitically sponging off their parents while consuming the fruits of postmodern Japan.
In this paper, I examine how women’s decisions about marriage and family have impacted official discourse about women’s role in national re/production. Over more than thirty years, dominant frames of women’s labor have shifted from reproductive to consumptive to productive. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, “Japanese style welfare” emphasized the importance of care giving roles for women. By the late 1980s, sustained high economic growth created conditions that encouraged many women to invest in themselves while postponing marriage and childbearing. Women are now touted as Japan’s “hidden resource;” their labor is vital to averting an impending labor shortage and immigration reform. From this position, women are articulating a gendered consciousness that has influenced political discourse on their role in maintaining the common good.
Mapping Gender in Contemporary Japan
Yumiko Mikanagi, International Christian University, Japan
Based on their observations of international relations (of mostly Western nations), feminist international relations scholars have pointed out that both the academic field of IR and actual international relations are highly gendered. This study is part of a project which aims at unraveling the link between foreign policymaking and gender construction of non-Western cases, Japan in particular.
As a step toward this goal, this paper aims at painting a general picture of how gender is constructed in contemporary Japan. Western literature on gender suggests that gender is a notion based upon Cartesian dualism. And within this dualism, attributes associated with femininities are given values lower than attributes associated with masculinities as exemplified by nature/civilization or emotion/reason. At the same time, gender literature shares the idea that construction of gender varies over time and across space/culture. This understanding presents us with a paradox. If gender construction varies across time and space/culture, then is it also possible that gender may be constructed not as dualistically/hierarchically in some cultures? As Iwao Sumiko has aptly described in her book The Japanese Woman (The Free Press, 1993), gender in Japan appears to be constructed strikingly different from that in the West. It appears that relations between men and women (and masculinities and femininities) in Japan seem to be rather complementary than hierarchically opposed. By tracing various types of gender images/ideals, I hope to reveal a gap between the (Western) notion of gender and how it is constructed in contemporary Japan.