Suchergebnisse

"Why are there so few Japanese women involved in the political system? In 2019 Japanese women made up 10% of the national Lower House, 21% of the Upper House, and 13% of local assemblies. According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, this places Japan 164th out of 193 countries when it comes to women's representation in the legislature. The percentage of women in the Lower House has only increased by fewer than two percentage points since women gained full suffrage and the right to stand for election in Japan in 1946. Eto analyses the various factors which have led to women's low presence in the Japanese legislature. She evaluates ways in which it might be possible for Japan to catch up and in doing so examines the ways in which Japanese society continues to perpetuate gender-rigid expectations of men and women. A valuable study both for scholars of Japanese politics and society, and for readers with an interest in the broader issue of the representation of women in politics"--

Abstract'Gender (jenda)' is a troublesome loanword in Japan. While this term has been prevalent in feminist and scholarly circles, it has evoked confusion in the government and stimulated a backlash from the ultra-conservatives against gender equality. Japanese reactionaries have attacked the concept of gender because of their anxiety about cultural destruction – I thus call them the 'old guard'. Focusing on a dispute over the term 'gender' between feminists and the old guard, this paper examines the changes in the term's usage and meanings in the Japanese political context. I first shed light on Japan's reaction to the newly arrived term 'gender', outlining different attitudes towards gender between the feminist/scholarly circles and the government. Secondly, I discuss the old guard's condemnation of the concept of gender, in which they distort its significance in order to diminish its positive impact on society. I then scrutinize the old guard's reasons behind their attack on the concept of gender. My findings reveal that the old guard, whose political cause is to protect traditional Japanese culture, asserts that gender equality damages this culture. Moreover, I refute their emphasis on Japan's uniqueness, demonstrating that Japanese women's traditional virtues under the patriarchal family system are not peculiar to Japan. To gauge how the concept of gender has been interpreted politically, I highlight legislative debates about the term 'gender'. In doing so, I elucidate the extent to which the concept of gender has infiltrated Japanese society through the dispute.

Notwithstanding the country's socio-economic advancement, Japanese women's presence in politics lags far behind many less developed countries. They are politically silent as their demands hardly reach the centre of political decision-making. The purpose of this compilation thesis is to find answers to the following questions: why Japanese women's political status remains low; how they tackle their under-representation; and what difficulties they face in their struggles for political involvement. Focusing both on their presence in legislatures and on their participatory activities within civil society, the thesis attempts to elucidate what impedes Japanese women from entering politics and the obstacles to their political activities. Specifically, the thesis attaches importance to the interplay between women's representation and feminist movements; that is, women's collective efforts to demand more women representatives are necessary to significantly improve their representation. The Japanese case demonstrates the inharmonious interplay between these two facets. It sheds light on a negative example, which illustrates that having only lukewarm women's movements calling for more women representatives contributes to women's on-going under-representation, which, in turn, discourages women from becoming more involved in these activities. Women's representation plays a symbolic and substantive role in developing democracy. In other words, with a well-functioning democracy, all members of the political community share power equally. Throughout this compilation, it is suggested that the vicious cycle of under-representation and lukewarm feminist activism is not only detrimental to Japanese women but it also impedes Japanese democracy from progressing further. The thesis is composed of six parts. The first part, as the introduction, aims to give a theoretical framework to the thesis, theorizing the interplay between electoral representation and participatory activities and putting forward my approach in the thesis. The subsequent parts comprise five previously published articles. Although each article has been published separately in different journals, each of them includes Japanese case studies, as well as general perspectives.

The author explores the impact of women on recent social policy reforms in Japan, focusing on three factors in their lobbying efforts: resources, strategies, & channels. She provides two case studies of groups that have influenced the social policy process: the Women's Assoc for Improving the Welfare of the Elderly & the Life Club Cooperative Society in Kanagawa. She discusses middle-class women's role in caring for the elderly, collective activities of unemployed married women, & women's challenges to Japan's traditional policy community dominated by men. 36 References. A. Funderburg