Sexism in Japan June 24 2015

This blog post is a revision of “Sexism in Japan 23 Sep 2014”. I wrote the previous version as a material for an ESL lesson. However, I was not able to use it. ESL tutors I met liked Japan and Japanese. I hesitated to show them the negative side of Japan.

But one day, a Filipina friend mentioned that she read my blog. So I became eager to complete it.

I am a Japanese. I had ESL lessons from Filipina tutors in Cebu City. I talked about sexism in Japan in a lesson with a tutor. There was a discussion question “Are women and men are equal in Japan?” I answered “They are equal in Japan.” The answer came from my experience.

I myself have never seen sexism in Japan, but it is a reality that stiff sexism exists in my country. I realized it from a research by Akira Kawaguchi and Chizuko Ueno.

The research revealed that some (most?) Japanese companies benefit from sexism. The employment system discriminating against women allows the companies to employ women temporarily on low wages, even if the women have excellent skills. The discrimination against women is a rational attitude for companies which pursue profit.

However, this unfair employment system prevents the companies from employing productive women, because excellent women can leave a sexist workplace for a better one. And it makes the companies' productivity lower in the long term. That sort of unfair company will be defeated and will withdraw from the market, especially the global competitive market.

Some people claim that there is no sexism in Japan. I suppose they have never seen it.

I write about my experience relating to sexism here.

My mother died when I was 4 years old. I had been raised by my father. I have never seen sexism at home.

I had worked as an engineer for several companies. I saw a skilled female engineer was promoted, but I have never seen something that looks like the “Glass Ceiling”. 

The “Glass Ceiling” is a political term. It means an unfair system or set of attitudes that prevents some people (such as women or people of a certain race) from getting the most powerful jobs. 

For an engineer, skill is more important than gender. And I was so impatient that I quited my jobs too quickly to observe the “Glass Ceiling”. Of course, female and male engineers got the same wages for the same jobs in my observation.

I suppose that some people claiming that there is no sexism in Japan have experiences similar to mine.

Sexism has various aspects. The research sheds light on one of them. We Japanese need to overcome this issue.

参考文献

上野千鶴子 ネオリベと女性差別が少子化を生み出した 文藝春秋オピニオン 2013年の論点100

上野千鶴子 比較ジェンダー・レジーム論の構想 ジェンダー社会科学の可能性 第1巻

私は川口章さんの「ジェンダー経済格差」を読んでません。上野さんが言及してるのを読んだだけです。