Law analysis
Economic development and rule of law not the answer to gender equality: Japanese experience
Sharmina Nasrin
Women have historically been denied of their fundamental human rights and dignity in almost every society. Even in the 21st century, large scale inequality prevails against women who are poorly represented in public role, professionally marginalized or virtually missing in many spheres of the society and state as a result of this discrimination and denial of rights. Restoring equality between women and men, therefore, remains a major human rights challenge as well as a development concern in both national and global agenda.
It is commonly believed that economic empowerment and stringent legal instruments have important role to play in combating social inequalities and disparities. Economic solvency is vital to ensure basic necessities and opportunities for every citizen including men and women, while legal rules facilitate institutional capacity to enforce equal rights through appropriate measures. In this respect, developed countries, which have achieved high economic growth as well as well-enforced rule of law, are supposed to be in a better position to guarantee equal enjoyment of rights and opportunities for their citizen. However, there is world wide evidence that the concept of equality and economic development and law enforcement may not always go hand in hand. As far as the Human Development Index (HDI) or Gender Empowerment Measures (GEM) of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is concerned, many developed societies who rank amongst the top in higher GDP growth or enjoy good law and order, represent poor performance in gender equality.
A society is developed not only when it is economically developed or have strict rule of law, it must be an equal society as well. An equal society is one in which the rights, responsibilities and opportunities of individuals are not determined by the fact of one's social identity -- sexual, racial, ethno-religious or of any other kind. Due to women's reproductive and maternity role traditionally people take it for granted that domestic sphere is women's domain and public realm is a man's world. This traditional gender role put women inferior to men and denied their right to equal participation in professional life by reason of their womanhood. A developed economy or lawful society can secure a healthy, safe and better living for its entire citizens on equal basis, but it might produce limited or little impact upon the popular attitude to get it free from long standing social stereo types prevailing against women. Japan presents a glaring example of this case of gender inequality vis-à-vis legal and economic development.
Dual status of Japan: economic and legal development vs gender equality
Japan is a developed country which achieved high level economic growth as well as human development for its citizen. It is the second largest global economic power with a GNI per capita of about $29,000. According to the UNDP Human Development Report 2006, Japan ranks 7th out of 177 countries. The average life expectancy for Japanese female was 85 years against 78 years for male in 2005. About 97 percent Japanese women advance to high school while around 50 percent of them advance to higher education at university or junior college level. Japan's high economic development has been successful to ensure equal health care, education, employment and basic financial support for all.
With regard to legal status, it has made significant strides in the advancement of equality between men and women. Japanese Constitution recognizes equal rights and status for all of its people including women. Japanese women enjoy equal inheritance and matrimonial property rights under the Civil Code, right to free choice of spouse and child custody, equal employment opportunities and wages under labour law. Women are acknowledged equal status in almost every sector under the current Japanese law. The state of law enforcement is very strong in Japan making the prospect of law implementation regarding gender equality pretty well.
Based on these statistical facts, Japan seems to be an equal society with little discrimination between men and women. However, the case is not necessarily what the economic and legal status represents on the surface. If we look at the pattern of role, relationship and actual participation of men and women at family, society and public life, it reveals a different picture of gender equality. “Japan is still a developing country in terms of gender equality”, said Mariko Bando, a former Japanese higher civil servant. It becomes evident from its rank at 42nd among 75 countries in the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) of UNDP Human Development Report 2006 which shows the extent of women participation in political, economic and professional activities.
Role of men and women at work: 'office flower' and 'corporate warrior'
Despite the fact that female participation in labour force has been increasing sharply over the last few decades, Japanese business world as well as government sector is still male-dominated and gender biased. Employment practices in Japan clearly presents two distinct career paths for men and women making one the 'office warrior' while the other 'office flower'. While men are assigned with upper level decision making management positions, vast majority of female are generally employed at low profile clerical work and menial tasks. Although Japanese women aspire for promising career and remain fairly qualified with higher academic credentials as well as personal qualities, they basically perform the decorative role at work and experience slower rate of advancement.
Japanese Equal Employment Opportunity Law categorically prohibits any discriminatory practices against women in recruitment, assignment, benefits and promotion. But still very few women occupy higher managerial, administrative and political positions. According to Japanese government reports, the proportion of women in the national parliament accounts for about 9 percent membership in 2005. Although a total of 20 percent national civil servants are female, the proportion of female occupying senior executive positions remains noticeably as low as 1.7 percent. While 41 percent of Japanese women work, they hold only about 9 percent of managerial positions, compared with about 45 percent in the United States.
Apart from women's engagement in low profile, ornamental role at work, their labour force participation represents a distinct feature of disrupted working career. Around 70 per cent working women are reported to quit from workforce once they marry and have children after spending few years at work.
Sources of inequality: attitudinal challenge
One of the central reasons for this under-representation of women in higher level executive positions is attributed to the Japanese traditional social attitude towards women.
Traditionally Japan was a 'male-run', 'male-first' society which preferred women to be 'good wife-wise mother', while men to be 'stronger, wiser and more important than women'. Marriage and motherhood were considered the only source of fulfilment for women. Men had no family responsibility other than providing financial support. On the other hand, social attitude towards women's abilities to run public activities was also very negative. They were believed to possess poor managerial capacities with no leadership qualities. Therefore, women were hired to work only in short term clerical job or tea serving while career positions were reserved for men.
Even today employment situation in modern Japan is not free from the traditional gender role stereotypes despite government's sincere legal and policy supports. In a public opinion poll on a gender-equal society conducted by Cabinet Office in 2004, about 45 percent of Japanese people expressed to believe that husband should be the breadwinner and wife should stay at home. In another survey on social lifestyle it is found that Japanese men, who are branded as 'corporate warrior' for their dogged loyalty and devotion to work, spend very little time on housework and child caring regardless of whether their wives work or not. House work and child rearing are still regarded as the most appropriate tasks for women.
Since husbands don't pay sufficient attention to their home affairs, working wives have to shoulder double responsibilities at home and at work, and obviously for that reason most women fail to exhibit considerable degree of competence or seriousness at work. As a result men are naturally preferred than women at managerial work who work hard at the cost of their individual freedom and family life. Japanese managers hardly seem to be sensitive to the urgent needs of a female worker. There happen worse cases of women being illegally dismissed or excluded from important projects by their employers due to taking leave for pregnancy or looking after sick child. Since marital responsibility negatively impacts on women's career and employment status, many Japanese women nowadays seem to stay unmarried or don't want to take child.
These facts signify that although Japan is a highly developed country in terms of economic prosperity and legal development, women are still struggling with the traditional attitude to get their appropriate role and equal participation. Opportunities for participation and sharing of responsibilities both at family and public affairs are two important aspects of gender equality. In his 'More than 100 Million Women are Missing' Dr. Amartya Sen observed that our society is characterized by deeply embedded different kinds of gender inequalities including 'professional inequality' with lack of opportunities in employment and promotion at work.
From Japanese experience it appears that removing social inequalities with regard to gender is not merely a function of economic or legal initiatives. Gender equality law or policy support is important to provide the basis for claiming a right. But for proper application of the law popular participation is an essential precondition to set change in practice. People would voluntarily respect the law only when their traditional mindset is spontaneously motivated to recognize the necessity of the change. Since women's rights-based values seem to challenge the long-standing religious or social customary practices, much of resistance to the equality principle comes from popular attitude conditioned by traditional values. Large scale development or strict law can do little unless and until this biased attitude is changed through social awareness that women are not only women, they are human beings and so they have equal right and entitlement to professional participation. Along with law or economic empowerment, there must be equality of rights based social mobilization initiatives including awareness campaign, inclusion of gender equality issue into the education curriculum, extensive gender training at workplace and educational institutes etc. If the sources of challenge for women's rights are not properly addressed, neither law nor the economic development can effectively eliminate gender inequalities.
Sharmina Nasrin, government official currently studying Maters of Public Administration (MP) in the Niigata University, Japan.
