I’ve been digging into my bookmarked research sites and downloading/saving/reading a lot more new articles concerning various aspects of Japanese culture, this time as it pertains to women.
Here’s an older article (2004) that people should find interesting. Note the irony in my “older” label for it–2004 really wasn’t long ago at all, but according to this, Japanese women hoping to be successful outside of being housewives have little hope in finding Japanese male mates who would support them. Has much changed in a mere five years? I doubt it.
But I will take issue with this paragraph in the article:
To be fair, not all the blame for female angst here can be laid on Japanese men. The government has been slow to enforce equal opportunity laws, and both pay and the glass ceiling in most Japanese corporations remain low for women. Recession has hampered longer maternity leave and other family-friendly policies.
If 90%-plus of the Japanese government and higher corporate structures are being run by men, then the above is definitely self-contradictory. (It seems a lot of people have a general inability to connect the dots in logic, honestly.)
Whew. Going through this particular leg of research isn’t just time-consuming but pretty painful. I’m researching many subtopics from laws to business structure to higher education to cultural social expectations to criminal statistics like rape. I really feel sorry for Japanese girls and women, even if it’s through a Western lens. Granted, things should still improve here on this side of the pond. ^^
