Womanhood in Japan (Mar 2024): Twisting definition of diversity

“Womanhood in Japan” series column rounds up Japanese news related to women’s daily experiences of sexism here and considers what we can do to increase the pace of change.

In a new low, ruling party equates scantily clad women with diversity

Japan’s ruling political party has sunk to new lows in its gender misunderstanding. Photos have emerged of scantily clad female dancers interacting with politicians at a gathering held in November of a regional chapter of the Liberal Democratic Party.

Responding to questions in parliament from an opposition party member, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said that the event “doesn’t match the cabinet’s goal of diversity.”

This follows comments by the man responsible for organizing the appearance of the Glamor Dancers troupe, Tetsuya Kawabata, that the “go-go dancers” were invited after determining that their participation would be in accordance with the gathering’s theme of diversity, he told broadcaster ANN.

Female LDP politicians in the national parliament have spoken out against the event and Kawabata is reported to have resigned from the party.

The public is also not impressed, describing the images of bikini-clad women among business-suited men as something from a bygone era. Showing further dissonance between the public and the powers that be, many questioned why news stations that published photos of the event had blurred the faces of the politicians considering that they are public figures with a responsibility to voters.

Similarly disturbing was television news reports’ tendency to focus on elements of the event, such as the dancers reportedly being told to use their mouths to accept cash tips from the men, rather than the inappropriateness of simply hiring what appears to be an all-female dance troupe dressed in bikini-like outfits that advertises its performances as sexy.

For some LDP politicians, is the definition of “diversity” just the mere appearance of women at an event, regardless of their capacity?

At a national level, LDP politicians have spoken out against this, but it does expose the gap in gender awareness between large cities and more rural areas. Many women and girls in Japan today are still facing post-war era attitudes toward gender equality.

Perhaps if a woman had have been part of that group of politicians this would not have happened. Japan needs more women in positions of power—women who command respect, because incidents such as this make it pretty clear that Japanese society is not going to just give it to them.

With the LDP also unpopular due to inflation and a scandal over kickbacks from fundraising events, there has been speculation that the party may elect a female leader for the first time, which would create Japan’s first female prime minister. Perhaps that could be the slap to the face that Japan needs to snap it out of its gender biases. We’d like to see that happen.

Working conditions for women in Japan still tough

Japan ranks 27th out of 29 wealthy countries in terms of working conditions for women, The Economist magazine says in the “glass-ceiling index” it releases each year to mark International Women’s Day on March 8. (Japan 3rd-worst work environment for women of 29 OECD states: The Economist)

Japan traded places with Türkiye to move up one place, while South Korea stayed stuck at 29th.

The ten components of the index gauge factors from workforce participation and salaries to paid parental leave and political representation in 29 countries from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

By category, Japan had the lowest rating for women in managerial positions at 14.6%, significantly lower than the OECD average of 34.2%. And it ranked third from the bottom for the ratio of female executives—at 18% compared with the OECD average of 33%—and also for the gender wage gap, with women making 21.3% less than men on average.

Nordic countries continued to rank highly in the index.

As the magazine notes, since it started the index in 2013 “the pace of change has been glacial.” The countries rating low were slow to take action on gender equality, which suggests they need to hurry through more such changes now. We need to continue to vocally express the changes we want.

Womanhood in Japan means gaving to queue for a public Toilet

If you are a woman in Japan, you may be 1.75 times more likely to have to wait for a public toilet than a man does. It’s not surprising to find that the infrastructure of Japan advantages men, but boy is it frustrating and unnecessary.

After a panicked wait for a public toilet at a train station in Kurashiki, western Japan, in 2022, Manami Momose started taking note of the difference in the number of toilets provided in public toilet blocks mainly at train stations in the Tokyo region and discovered only 18 places out of 444 have more for women than for men. She has been posting her findings on social media under the theme “How many people can pee at one time?”

The use of urinals, which are more compact than toilets, is often what exaggerates the gender inequality. Her most inequitable finding so far, Momose told the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper, has been the JR Hachioji station, near Tokyo, where there are 6 toilets for women and 7 for men, plus an additional 10 urinals for men.

The report notes that some railways have been making changes, including Sagami Railway at Yokohama Station, where extra toilets for women were added after the waiting queue was stretching onto the train platform during the morning rush and Tokyu Corporation, which changed all the squat-style toilets for men and women to western-style ones following a complaint that people refusing to use the squat style was causing queues.

Perhaps the lesson here is to ask for the changes you want to see. First, of course, you need to be like Momose-san and question a social norm—such as women often having to queue for the toilet while men do not—and what causes it.

Womanhood in Japan series