In an interview we did with
Director Azimi of UNITAR, she talked specifically about the need, in Asia especially, for women to be in positions of power in government and in the workforce. We were talking at the time Hillary Clinton was going for the US presidential candidacy and she mentioned that one or two women in positions of power would make very little difference in policies and have only a slight effect on the situations for a majority of women in the populations.
However, it is in situations where women can maintain a large percentage of the overall group of employees in a company or politicians in a government that she has seen a big effect happening on general, everyday life for the population.
As a teacher at a women's university, I often play a role in counseling my students as well as teaching issues that are relevant to their lives. I find that my counseling role especially becomes important while they are in their final years, looking for jobs and trying to find the right career. We have a lot of discussions on womens issues in Japan in my seminar class especially and the many conflicting policies for working women.
The government is trying to make policies which support working women in some areas, but making it more difficult in other areas. For example, the government is giving financial subsidies for families with school-age children, increasing the subsidy for families with more than 2 children. On the other hand, the government is not allowing more daycare centers to become certified (because in all likelihood they will be unused if the population continues to shrink) making it very difficult for working mothers to go back to work after having children they were encouraged to have to help with the shrinking population. You would think it would save us all a lot of headache if the government officials involved in these two conflicting areas could have a cup of coffee together one morning!
On a more positive note, some forward-thinking female politicians have been arguing for a change in the workplace situations for all working parents of school-age children (both men and women) to allow parents to share the burdens of balancing work and home life. It has also been female politicians that pushed forward the law change so women could choose to change their names or not when they get married, divorced or widowed. At the moment, the law is completely out of date with modern women's lifestyles. But this issue has received a lot of negative press saying it will be the end of family unity and what-not. What my students who seem upset by this law (and many others I have met) is that the system in place now will be the same, it will just be supplimented to allow women more freedom if a woman's situation changes.
A colleague of mine divorced her husband 10 years ago, but has been restricted by law in changing her name despite her having been a successful working woman before they were married and having a positive association to her name professionally. I think a lot of the resistance is to preserve the "koseki" 戸籍 family register which is flawed in many, many other ways. The family register system in Japan needs an update to fit modern families which often include non-Japanese members and entire non-Japanese families residing in Japan who are excluded completely from the family register at the moment.
Another flaw in the
koseki and name changing system is in the case of an abused wife or children who move away from the abusing husband, and assume a different name to protect themselves, but then the children and wife are still registered under the father's family registry and the children and wife can draw no governmental benefits or stimulation package. It becomes trickier still if the wife is not Japanese as only the children would be on the family register and even if she were allowed to change her name, the children would be unable to change theirs legally since foreign parents are not officially part of the family.
Interestingly, the kidnapping case in Fukuoka of an American father who tried to take his kids back to the US with him after his Japanese wife had kidnapped them from the US in the first place and was a wanted criminal in the US courts; brought to light the "reason" experts believe Japan has not signed the Hague agreement. Signing the agreement would protect children from being kidnapped out of the country they live and would only allow courts and judges to decide parenting and custody rights for children no matter where they were from. The experts said however that Japan will not sign, to protect women and children escape without need of legal instruction, back to Japan in cases of abuse or neglect. However, there are no case studies of how many cases this would constitute in total, so it doesn't seem very realistic.
There are horribly unfair stories of foreign parents who are completely disallowed from seing their children in cases of divorce or in the case of the Japanese partner's death when the Japanese grandparents sometimes take legal parentage rights instead of the surviving partner. If Japan signed the Hague agreement it should improve all parents rights within Japan as well as outside of Japan.
Signing the Hague agreement and allowing women to choose their surnames in Japan might be the encouragement needed to reassess the whole
Koseki family registry system in Japan as well.
The problem remains that these kind of changes in policy are unlikely to be made unless you have women in the room when these decisions are made and that means having women represented in positions of power in government and companies. Few of these issues affect Japanese men directly (besides the ageing/shrinking population which affects all Japanese taxpayers) in politics or positions of power, so why should they have any vested interest in changing them?
So, back to gender quotas- good or bad idea?
Well, gender quotas are often phrased together with "affirmative action" programs, but that term seems to have lost its appeal. Is it fair to hire a woman over a man? I say YES! If the man and woman are equally qualified, but there is a great majority of men in the workplace already then it is the best decision, no matter what term you use for it- it just makes good common sense.
I like how
Emily Edgecombe says it in the insightful blog for the organisation, "
I Know Politics"
Despite the controversial nature of gender quotas, I believe they can be helpful in combating the many social, economic and political challenges that women continue to face around the world. Until women gain equal access to leadership positions in all realms of society we will not experience a full expression of democracy. I hope that the trend towards gender quotas will continue in a legitimate and meaningful way, giving women the voice they deserve in creating more just and stable societies.
The United States lags behind the world average of 16% representation for women in parliament/congress. While it is not very likely that the United States will ever institute a gender quota system, gender quotas can be an excellent tool for increasing the representation of women in parliaments and congressional bodies worldwide. Without gender quotas the increase in women’s political representation is often very gradual if not stagnant. It is very difficult for women leaders to implement change without having a “critical mass” of women represented, usually no less than 30%. Nordic countries such as Norway and Sweden, thanks to gender quotas, have some of the highest percentages of women in parliament and are likewise some of the most gender progressive countries in the world. Gender quotas are also an up-and-coming force in the developing world; Rwanda is a model in this respect with nearly 50% women in parliament.
