Political Women in Japan

Political Women in Japan PDF

Author: Susan J. Pharr

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2023-04-28

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0520309979

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Drawing on interviews with one hundred young Japanese women engaged in a spectrum of voluntary political groups, Susan J. Pharr explores how politically active women overcome the constraints that bar or limit the political participation of the average woman. The book treats political volunteers as agents of social change in a process of role redefinition by which prevailing concepts of women's roles gradually adjust to accommodate political behavior. Tracing developments that led to the grant of suffrage and other political rights to women during the Allied occupation, Pharr sets the stage for an analysis of that process as it unfolds in the experience of individual women. She uses women's images of self and society and issues of political and gender role socialization, career and life expectations, and political role and participation to develop a three-fold typology for looking at political women in Japan. She examines both the satisfactions of political volunteerism—from the exhilaration of addressing a crowd from a sound truck to the pleasure of speaking "men's language"—and the psychological and social costs associated with it. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1981.

Women and Politics in Contemporary Japan

Women and Politics in Contemporary Japan PDF

Author: Emma Dalton

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-02-11

Total Pages: 158

ISBN-13: 1317554183

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This book looks at the gendering of the political system in Japan and the effects of that system on gender equality in national-level politics specifically and wider society more generally. It examines the approach taken by the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to issues of gender equality in Japan, and the repercussions of that approach on women’s political experiences and representation. This book covers a range of themes including the role of the LDP and other major political parties in constructing the modern Japanese political system, the under-representation of women in Japanese politics, women’s experiences in party politics and the gendering of government policies. Using in-depth interviews with women members of the national Diet, the book sheds light on how political women negotiate the male-dominated world of Japanese politics.

Gender and Human Rights Politics in Japan

Gender and Human Rights Politics in Japan PDF

Author: Jennifer Chan-Tiberghien

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9780804750226

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This book examines the impact of global human rights norms on the development of women's, children's, and minority rights in Japan since the early 1990s.

Women and Political Inequality in Japan

Women and Political Inequality in Japan PDF

Author: Mikiko Eto

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-12-17

Total Pages: 14

ISBN-13: 1000283127

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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 14% 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 that 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 how Japanese society continues to perpetuate gender-rigid expectations of people. This text is a valuable study for scholars of Japanese politics and society, and for readers with an interest in the broader issue of the representation of women in politics.

Women Of Japan & Korea

Women Of Japan & Korea PDF

Author: Joyce Gelb

Publisher: Temple University Press

Published: 2009-01-30

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1439900965

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Original research on the changing roles of women in Japan and Korea.

Beyond the Gender Gap in Japan

Beyond the Gender Gap in Japan PDF

Author: Gill Steel

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2019-01-23

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 0472131141

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Why do Japanese women enjoy a high sense of well-being in a context of high inequality? Beyond the Gender Gap in Japan brings together researchers from across the social sciences to investigate this question. The authors analyze women’s values and the lived experiences at home, in the family, at work, in their leisure time, as volunteers, and in politics and policy-making. Their research shows that the state and firms have blurred “the public” and “the private” in postwar Japan, constraining individuals’ lives, and reveals the uneven pace of change in women’s representation in politics. Yet, despite these constraints, the increasing diversification in how people live and how they manage their lives demonstrates that some people are crafting a variety of individual solutions to structural problems. Covering a significant breadth of material, the book presents comprehensive findings that use a variety of research methods—public opinion surveys, in-depth interviews, a life history, and participant observation—and, in doing so, look beyond Japan’s perennially low rankings in gender equality indices to demonstrate the diversity underneath, questioning some of the stereotypical assumptions about women in Japan.

Popular Democracy in Japan

Popular Democracy in Japan PDF

Author: Sherry L. Martin

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2011-03-15

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 9780801461309

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Popular Democracy in Japan examines a puzzle in Japanese politics: Why do Japanese women turn out to vote at rates higher than men? On the basis of in-depth fieldwork in various parts of the country, Sherry L. Martin argues that the exclusion of women from a full range of opportunities in public life provokes many of them to seek alternative outlets for self-expression. They have options that include a wide variety of study, hobby, and lifelong learning groups—a feature of Japanese civic life that the Ministry of Education encourages. Women who participate in these alternative spaces for learning tend, Martin finds, to examine the political conditions that have pushed them there. Her research suggests that study group participation increases women’s confidence in using various types of political participation (including voting) to pressure political elites for a more inclusive form of democracy. Considerable overlap between the narratives that emerge from women’s groups and a survey of national public opinion identifies these groups as crucial sites for crafting and circulating public discourses about politics. Martin shows how the interplay between public opinion and institutional change has given rise to bottom-up changes in electoral politics that culminated in the 2009 Democratic Party of Japan victory in the House of Representatives election.

Under the Shadow of Nationalism

Under the Shadow of Nationalism PDF

Author: Mariko Asano Tamanoi

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 1998-03-01

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9780824820046

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The contribution of rural women to the creation and expansion of the Japanese nation-state is undeniable. As early as the nineteenth century, the women of central Japan's Nagano prefecture in particular provided abundant and cheap labor for a number of industries, most notably the silk spinning industry. Rural women from Nagano could also be found working, from a very young age, as nursemaids, domestic servants, and farm laborers. In whatever capacity they worked, these women became the objects of scrutiny and reform in a variety of nationalist discourses--not only because of the importance of their labor to the nation, but also because of their gender and domicile (the countryside was the centerpiece of state ideology and practice before and during the war, during the Occupation, and beyond). Under the Shadow of Nationalism explores the interconnectedness of nationalism and gender in the context of modern Japan. It combines the author's long-term field research with a painstaking examination of the documents behind these discourses produced at various levels of society, from the national (government records, social reformers' reports, ethnographic data) to the local (teachers' manuals, labor activists' accounts, village newspapers). It provides a wide-ranging yet in-depth look at a key group of Japanese women as national subjects through the critical chapters of Japanese modernity and postmodernity.

Women and Public Life in Early Meiji Japan

Women and Public Life in Early Meiji Japan PDF

Author: Mara Patessio

Publisher: U of M Center For Japanese Studies

Published: 2011-01-07

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 192928067X

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Women and Public Life in Early Meiji Japan focuses on women’s activities in the new public spaces of Meiji Japan. With chapters on public, private, and missionary schools for girls, their students, and teachers, on social and political groups women created, on female employment, and on women’s participation in print media, this book offers a new perspective on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Japanese history. Women’s founding of and participation in conflicting discourses over the value of women in Meiji public life demonstrate that during this period active and vocal women were everywhere, that they did not meekly submit to the dictates of the government and intellectuals over what women could or should do, and that they were fully integrated in the production of Meiji culture. Mara Patessio shows that the study of women is fundamental not only in order to understand fully the transformations of the Meiji period, but also to understand how later generations of women could successfully move the battle forward. Women and Public Life in Early Meiji Japan is essential reading for all students and teachers of 19th- and early 20th-century Japanese history and is of interest to scholars of women’s history more generally.

Women and Politics in Japan and Korea

Women and Politics in Japan and Korea PDF

Author: Youngtae Shin

Publisher:

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13:

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This book is about the role of women in Korean and Japanese politics over the past century. It is exceedingly rare to have a comparative analysis of politics in Japan and the Republic of Korea, which gives this book a special status. At the same time these are countries with remarkably low levels of political participation by women, so it is very important to have an analysis of the reasons for this outcome. In the 1970s women accounted for less than two percent of legislative representatives in Japan, and less than one percent in Korea; today women constitute about seven percent of the members in each legislature, but these levels are still comparatively low in the developed world: about forty-three percent of Sweden's legislators are women, and women constitute more than 30 percent of Germany's Bundestag; the level in the U.S. Congress is about thirteen per cent.