Japan is an amazing place. It has reliably good food, insanely convenient transport, good-to-the-point-it’s-shocking service and it’s really safe at almost any hour. However, there are some things about Japan that can really overshadow many of its good points and that is the sexism. Don’t get me wrong, sexism is rife in many other places but overt displays of patriarchy in professional and public settings which would be rightfully considered disrespectful in other parts of the developed world somehow makes its way into Japan.
The recent controversy concerning Ayaka Shiomura and the sexist jeers she was subjected to while campaigning for more rights for mothers and women in Tokyo’s parliament has been covered to death by local and international media so instead of reiterating what went down, here are some links:
In essence, yet another woman was shamed for her perfectly legitimate life choices, shamed for what she chose to do with her uterus by insecure men (note: not all men are insecure but that does not in make the problem of sexism any less valid) who just can’t seem to handle women taking charge of their own lives and their own bodies.
Let’s take down these sexist insults one by one. Beware, thought, just reading what the Tokyo assemblymen said might make you feel as if your intelligence has been violently assaulted. You’ve been warned.
“Why don’t you hurry up and get married?”
Let me just say what we all wanna say here: Why don’t you hurry up and GTFO?!
Honestly, society needs to get over itself and stop obsessing over marriage so darn much. A woman’s value is not tied to her marriage status. Period. It’s just as simple as that. A young, single woman, an older single woman, a young married woman, an older married woman and women of other sexual orientations and relationship statuses are all of equal value. That value is equal to that of all other human beings.
Everyone needs to recognize that marriage is a choice and that a woman is a full human being with full human rights. She can choose to get married, she can choose to remain single, she can choose to get divorced and these are her choices and her choices only. Stop treating women with less respect or regard women as less successful simply because they didn’t go down the conventional path of marriage. Marriage is not for everyone and there is not a ‘right time’ to get married, and I applaud anyone who can stand by such views despite overwhelming societal pressure that says the contrary.
Moreover, a woman can be a happy, fulfilled individual with or without marriage. To judge her value as a person based on her marital status is illogical and honestly, a pretty nasty thing to do. It’s basically saying that a woman’s sole goal in life is marriage, conveniently disregarding the fact that women are capable of and actually do have dreams, ambitions and goals of their own that have nothing to do with marriage.
Last but not least, the status of one’s marriage does not impact their ability to do good work and to contribute positively to the field they are in. Hence, in a professional setting, one’s marriage status should not be bought into discussion, especially not in parliament, which is supposed to be a respectful space. Moreover, Shiomura was discussing very real issues that women and mothers in Japan face. She was raising valid points and offering constructive advice for the government She was, quite simply, just doing her job. That her fellow assemblymen taunted and humiliated her publicly during her speech was not only disrespectful and rude in the extreme; it also unfairly undercuts the importance of what she was saying and thus undermined the quality of political discussion and engagement.
“Can’t you even bear a child?”
The real issue here is that infertility is actually a very real and very frustrating ailment that plagues a significant portion of women in society. For assemblymen to not only humiliate a woman publicly but also do it in such a way that trivialises and makes a joke out of infertility is just plain distasteful. It just shows how inconsiderate the men who taunted her are and how these men view themselves as superior over women in general.
These men behaved not just in an abhorrent manner befitting of MCPs (male chauvinistic pigs) but they were just really bad politicians. One of the assemblymen who taunted Shiomura is actually from Prime Minister’s Shinzo Abe’s party which has reiterated time and again, explicitly, that they would like to reduce the gender gap in Japan. Like, excuse me? Did you not get the memo that you’re at least supposed to pretend that you’re pro-women? Did you just fail at the base level of being a politician which is basically just playacting? A hypocritical politician is bad but a hypocritical politician who doesn’t even know how to act nice is bad and kinda stupid.
Also, perhaps these politicians who claim that they want to solve problems and improve Japan were too caught up with belittling women in public that they didn’t realize that some of Japan’s biggest problems can be resolved or at least better managed by giving women more recognition and rights! Japan is facing one of the lowest birth rates in the world and a rapidly aging population, which suffice to say, is a really bad combination. Yes sure, there are many reasons as to why this is happening but maybe, just maybe, if anyone stopped to think, one of the main reasons is that women in Japan are somehow expected to give up their career ambitions once they get married and have kids? Japanese women are well-educated women, with many of them achieving university qualifications. Perhaps it’s not that big a surprise that some of them actually want to put their education to good use and climb the corporate ladder instead of having kids and then becoming invisible to their superiors at work by default.
Perhaps if there was a stronger push for mothers in the workforce or if the currently almost non-existent concept of maternity leave materializes, Japan might see an increase in its birth rate as women begin to realize that they have a better chance at balancing their careers with their families.
And with that perhaps Japan’s economy will be strengthened to a greater extent. Japan basically has an underutilized, almost untapped pool of human resource: its women. If Japanese society and infrastructure stopped limiting women’s roles according to outdated ideas of what it means to be a woman then perhaps it’ll see its economy pick up significantly.
Ultimately, the entire issue not only reflects badly on the assemblymen who jeered at Shiomura but also exposes the underlying, deep-seated gender divide in Japan which is only detrimental to its future and development.