Download or read book Beyond the Gender Gap in Japan written by Gill Steel and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2019-01-23 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Feminism and Gender Research in Japan written by Diane Elson and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-10-20 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a large gap between Japan’s ranking on indicators of economic development and on indicators of gender equality. This book helps us to understand why. The chapters in this volume illuminate important dimensions of gender inequality in Japan – in relation to class, and in comparison to other countries. The book considers the relation of gender inequality to neoliberal policies, and the implications of gender inequality for social reproduction. It demonstrates the ways in which leading Japanese scholars are debating and analysing these issues, in dialogue with feminist economists from Mexico and UK. The chapters in this book were originally published in The Japanese Political Economy.
Download or read book Modern Women in China and Japan written by Katrina Gulliver and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-02-21 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the dawn of the 1930s a new empowered and liberated image of the female was taking root in popular culture in the West. This 'modern woman' archetype was also penetrating into Eastern cultures, however, challenging the Chinese and Japanese historical norm of the woman as homemaker, servant or geisha. Through a focus on the writings of the Western women who engaged with the Far East, and the Eastern writers and personalities who reacted to this new global gender communication by forming their own separate identities, Katrina Gulliver reveals the complex redefining of the self taking place in a crucial time of political and economic upheaval. Including an analysis of the work of Nobel Prize laureate Pearl S. Buck, The Modern Woman in China and Japan is an important contribution to gender studies and will appeal to historians and scholars of China and East Asia as well as to those studying Asian and American literature.
Download or read book Transforming Japan written by Kumiko Fujimura-Fanselow and published by The Feminist Press at CUNY. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A volume of essays by Japan’s leading female scholars and activists exploring their country’s recent progressive cultural shift. When the feminist movement finally arrived in Japan in the 1990s, no one could have foreseen the wide-ranging changes it would bring to the country. Nearly every aspect of contemporary life has been impacted, from marital status to workplace equality, education, politics, and sexuality. Now more than ever, the Japanese myth of a homogenous population living within traditional gender roles is being challenged. The LGBTQ population is coming out of the closet, ever-present minorities are mobilizing for change, single mothers are a growing population, and women are becoming political leaders. In Transforming Japan, Kumiko Fujimura-Fanselow has gathered the most comprehensive collection of essays written by Japanese educators and researchers on the ways in which present-day Japan confronts issues of gender, sexuality, race, discrimination, power, and human rights.
Download or read book Scream from the Shadows written by Setsu Shigematsu and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first sustained analysis of the Japanese women's liberation movement of the '70s, with its lessons for contemporary politics
Download or read book Japanese Feminist Debates written by Ayako Kano and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2016-06-30 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent years have seen a surge of interest in Japanese feminism and gender history. This new volume brings to light Japan's feminist public sphere, a discursive space in which academic, journalistic, and political voices have long met and sparred over issues that remain controversial to the present day: prostitution, pornography, reproductive rights, the balance between motherhood and paid work, relationships between individual, family, and state. Japanese Feminist Debates: A Century of Contention on Sex, Love, and Labor contributes to this discussion in a number of unique ways. The book is organized around intellectually and politically charged debates, including important recent developments in state feminism and the conservative backlash against it, spearheaded by the current prime minister, Abe Shinzō. Focusing on essential questions that have yet to be resolved, Ayako Kano traces the emergence and development of these controversies in relation to social, cultural, intellectual, and political history. Her focus on the " rondan"—the Japanese intellectual public sphere—allows her to show how disputes taking place therein interacted with both popular culture and policy making. Kano argues that these feminist debates explain an important paradox: why Japan is such a highly developed modern nation yet ranks dismally low in gender equality. Part of the answer lies in the contested definitions of gender equality and women's liberation, and this book traces these contentions over the course of modern Japanese history. It also situates these debates in relation to modern Japanese social policy and comparative discussions about welfare regimes. By covering an entire century, Japanese Feminist Debates is able to trace the origins and development of feminist consciousness from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Based on over a decade of research, this wide-ranging, lively, up-to-date book will both spark discussion among specialists grappling with long-enduring subjects of intellectual debate and animate undergraduate and graduate classrooms on modern Japanese women's history and gender studies.
Download or read book Gender Nation and State in Modern Japan written by Andrea Germer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-07-25 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gender, Nation and State in Modern Japan makes a unique contribution to the international literature on the formation of modern nation–states in its focus on the gendering of the modern Japanese nation-state from the late nineteenth century to the present. References to gender relations are deeply embedded in the historical concepts of nation and nationalism, and in the related symbols, metaphors and arguments. Moreover, the development of the binary opposition between masculinity and femininity and the development of the modern nation-state are processes which occurred simultaneously. They were the product of a shift from a stratified, hereditary class society to a functionally-differentiated social body. This volume includes the work of an international group of scholars from Japan, the United States, Australia and Germany, which in many cases appears in English for the first time. It provides an interdisciplinary perspective on the formation of the modern Japanese nation–state, including comparative perspectives from research on the formation of the modern nation–state in Europe, thus bringing research on Japan into a transnational dialogue. This volume will be of interest in the fields of modern Japanese history, gender studies, political science and comparative studies of nationalism.
Download or read book Rethinking Japanese Feminisms written by Julia C. Bullock and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2018-03-31 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rethinking Japanese Feminisms offers a broad overview of the great diversity of feminist thought and practice in Japan from the early twentieth century to the present. Drawing on methodologies and approaches from anthropology, cultural studies, gender and sexuality studies, history, literature, media studies, and sociology, each chapter presents the results of research based on some combination of original archival research, careful textual analysis, ethnographic interviews, and participant observation. The volume is organized into sections focused on activism and activists, employment and education, literature and the arts, and boundary crossing. Some chapters shed light on ideas and practices that resonate with feminist thought but find expression through the work of writers, artists, activists, and laborers who have not typically been considered feminist; others revisit specific moments in the history of Japanese feminisms in order to complicate or challenge the dominant scholarly and popular understandings of specific activists, practices, and beliefs. The chapters are contextualized by an introduction that offers historical background on feminisms in Japan, and a forward-looking conclusion that considers what it means to rethink Japanese feminism at this historical juncture. Building on more than four decades of scholarship on feminisms in Japanese and English, as well as decades more on women’s history, Rethinking Japanese Feminisms offers a diverse and multivocal approach to scholarship on Japanese feminisms unmatched by existing publications. Written in language accessible to students and non-experts, it will be at home in the hands of students and scholars, as well as activists and others interested in gender, sexuality, and feminist theory and activism in Japan and in Asia more broadly. An electronic version of this book is freely available thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched, a collaborative initiative designed to make high-quality books open access for the public good. The open-access version of this book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means that the work may be freely downloaded and shared for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. Derivative works and commercial uses require permission from the publisher.
Download or read book A Path Toward Gender Equality written by Yoshie Kobayashi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-04-23 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first study of state feminism in a non-western nation state, this volume focuses on the activities and roles of the Women's Bureau of the Ministry of Labor in post-World War II Japan. While state feminism theory possesses a strong capability to examine state-society relationships in terms of feminist policymaking, it tends to neglect a state's activity in improving women's status and rights in non-western nations where the feminist movements are apathetic or antagonistic to the state and where the state also creates a vertical relationship with feminist groups.
Download or read book The Woman s Hand written by Paul Gordon Schalow and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume has a dual purpose. It aims to define the state of Japanese literary studies in the field of women's writing and to present cross-cultural interpretations of Japanese material of relevance to contemporary work in gender studies and comparative literature.
Download or read book Women and Public Life in Early Meiji Japan written by Mara Patessio and published by U of M Center For Japanese Studies. This book was released on 2011-01-07 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Gender Policies in Japan and the United States Comparing Women s Movements Rights and Politics written by J. Gelb and published by Springer. This book was released on 2003-12-11 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first to explore the similarities and differences in gender related policy making and outcomes in Japan and the United States. It focuses on the role of women's movements and other factors in determining policy. Three policies are examined: Equal employment, domestic violence and reproductive rights, with additional attention to gender equality policy in Japan and 'family friendly policy' in both nations. The analysis examines the significance of international feminism and new standards of gender equity - kansetsu gaiatsu - as a resource for Japanese feminists seeking policy reform, as well as new trends toward policy cooperation. The future role of the United States, long a leader in policy development for women, is critically analyzed, and Gelb suggests that American feminists and policymakers can learn important lessons from the experience of Japanese women's movements and efforts at influencing public policy.
Download or read book Rethinking Japanese Feminisms written by Julia C. Bullock and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rethinking Japanese Feminisms offers a broad overview of the great diversity of feminist thought and practice in Japan from the early twentieth century to the present. Drawing on methodologies and approaches from anthropology, cultural studies, gender and sexuality studies, history, literature, media studies, and sociology, each chapter presents the results of research based on some combination of original archival research, careful textual analysis, ethnographic interviews, and participant observation. The volume is organized into sections focused on activism and activists, employment and education, literature and the arts, and boundary crossing. Some chapters shed light on ideas and practices that resonate with feminist thought but find expression through the work of writers, artists, activists, and laborers who have not typically been considered feminist; others revisit specific moments in the history of Japanese feminisms in order to complicate or challenge the dominant scholarly and popular understandings of specific activists, practices, and beliefs. The chapters are contextualized by an introduction that offers historical background on feminisms in Japan, and a forward-looking conclusion that considers what it means to rethink Japanese feminism at this historical juncture. Building on more than four decades of scholarship on feminisms in Japanese and English, as well as decades more on women's history, Rethinking Japanese Feminisms offers a diverse and multivocal approach to scholarship on Japanese feminisms unmatched by existing publications. Written in language accessible to students and non-experts, it will be at home in the hands of students and scholars, as well as activists and others interested in gender, sexuality, and feminist theory and activism in Japan and in Asia more broadly.
Download or read book Feminist Movements in Contemporary Japan written by Laura Dales and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-06-26 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book investigates the features and effects of feminism in contemporary Japan, in non-government (NGO) women’s groups, government-run women’s centres and the individual activities of feminists. Based on two years of fieldwork conducted in Japan and drawing on extensive interviews and ethnographic data, it argues that the work of individual activists and women’s organisations in Japan promotes real and potential change to gender roles and expectations among Japanese women.
Download or read book Gender and Family in Japan written by Nobuko Okuda and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-11-30 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the 6th volume of the Monograph Series of the Socio-Economic History Society, Japan. The book focuses on how economic developments changed the everyday lives of ordinary women in early-modern and modern Japan. Different from precedent gender studies, the spotlight here is on the daily activities and structural positions of women rather than feminist movements or activities of elite women. Using demography, anthropometrics, and labour economics, this book explicates childcare, physical development of girls, and women’s labour migration. The dynamics of ordinary women in prewar Japan may change deep-rooted images of women as oppressed beings. Using quantitative data multi-dimensionally with the latest statistical analysis methods, this book shows how Japanese economic historians can contribute to historians of gender and family who are interested in early-modern and modern Japan. The first part consists of four chapters that discuss women migrant workers in the Tokugawa period, women’s work, and family strategies in the underdeveloped regions of the country, conflicts between child-rearing and women’s work on family farms, and living standards of teenaged girls in early twentieth-century Japan. Those chapters provide a bridge between economic historians and feminist historians and articulate new research fields for both. The second part, comprising four book reviews, illustrates how the gender concept has been adopted in family and gender historiography in Japan.
Download or read book Comparative Perspectives on Gender Equality in Japan and Norway written by Masako Ishii-Kuntz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-28 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book compares perspectives on gender equality in Norway and Japan, focusing on family, education, media, and sexuality and reproduction as seen through a gendered lens. What can we learn from a comparison between two countries that stand in significant contrast to each other with respect to gender equality? Norway and Japan differ in terms of historical, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. Most importantly, Japan lags far behind Norway when it comes to the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Report. Rather than taking a narrow approach that takes as its starting point the assumption that Norway has so much ‘more’ to offer in terms of gender equality, the authors attempt to show that a comparative perspective of two countries in the West and East can be mutually beneficial to both contexts in the advancement of gender equality. The interdisciplinary team of researchers contributing to this book cover a range of contemporary topics in gender equality, including fatherhood and masculinity, teaching and learning in gender studies education, cultural depictions of gender, trans experiences and feminism. This unique collection is suitable for researchers and students of gender studies, sociology, anthropology, Japan studies and European studies.
Download or read book Identity Gender and Status in Japan written by Takie Lebra and published by Global Oriental. This book was released on 2007-06-21 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As one of Japan’s leading post-war anthropologists, the writings of Takie Lebra have had significant impact on Western understanding and appreciation of the structures and workings of Japanese society. In particular, her research into the notions of self and self-other relationships, issues of gender and women and motherhood has provided a new paradigm in the way these issues are now addressed. Similarly, her analysis of the status culture of royalty and the aristocracy in Japan, based on extensive field study, which culminated in her book Above the Clouds: Status Culture of the Modern Japanese Nobility (1993), has been widely regarded as the most important contribution of its kind to date. This volume brings together twenty-four of the author’s key papers on the three principal areas of her research over the last thirty-five years, and includes a complete Bibliography of her published writings, subdivided into books, articles in journals or as book chapters, and book reviews. The collection is introduced by Takie Lebra herself, in which she first ‘reviews’ selected essays appearing in the volume, along with a consideration of the contemporary controversy surrounding the imperial succession. In conclusion, by way of a personal ‘mini memoir’, she offers what she terms ‘a sentimental reverie on my own self as a “native outsider”’.
