Japanese women in grassroots politics

Building a gender-equal society from the bottom up

Datos Bibliográficos

ID12206842
AutoresYasuo Takao (0000-0002-8425-8476, Curtin University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2007
Volumen20
Número2
Páginas147-172
Fecha de publicación2007-05-23
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Pacific Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0951-2748 • E-ISSN: 1470-1332
EditorialTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09512740701306790
OpenAlexW2044681350
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas5
Referencias citadas35

The 1979 UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women highlights the importance of equal participation of women in public life. Since the early 1960s, women in Japan have voted in elections at significantly higher rates than men. However, Japanese women's equal participation in policy formulation and decision making lags far behind major democracies. Gender equality is stated under the Japanese Constitution, but social practices are far from equal. There are no legal constraints on Japanese women's right to candidacy for public office, but they are far underrepresented in local and national elected assemblies. In 1999 an important landmark in the substantial progress towards gender equality took place when the Japanese government, for the first time, legally denounced the stereotyped division of roles on the basis of gender and described men and women as equal partners. An unprecedented amount of legislation, together with policy changes and organizational reform at the national level were introduced from this state-led initiation. In the same year, women's grassroots groups were rapidly moving beyond the reach of policy, organizational, and legal changes; they successfully conducted a major nationwide campaign for ‘More Women to Assemblies¡’ and increased the number of elected women representatives at the local level at an unprecedented rate. The purpose of this article is to assess the potential of increased women's political voices in Japan, which can be seen as an alternative way of solving the problems of political disengagement in the male-dominated representative democracy. To this end, the article examines the course of watershed events in 1999 towards a gender-equal society in Japan, with special emphasis on the importance of grassroots missions in eliminating barriers to Japanese women's political participation

Constitution · Democracy · Economic growth · Economics · Gender equality · Government (linguistics · Grassroots · Legislation · Parliament · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science · Gender Politics and Representation · Gender Studies · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Public Administration · Social Policy and Reform Studies