The UN decade for women and Japan: Tools for change

Rapid industrial growth in post-World War II Japan has contributed to radical external changes in the lives of Japanese women. Among them, the increase in the average woman's lifespan and the decrease in family size have given women a number of years when they are relatively free of childcare and therefore available to enter the job market. Nevertheless, traditional values help to maintain rigid sex-role stereotyping and are woven together with the aims of the capitalist, corporate society to form a complex socio-economic fabric in which women are kept in a subordinate position economically, socially and psychologically. It is against this background that the International Women's Year and the UN Decade for Women have been introduced to Japan and have had the positive effect of providing both validity to the efforts of individuals and organizations struggling for sexual equality, and tools with which to apply leverage in the struggle to change discriminatory social institutions. In this brief paper, a number of issues that are being confronted by women in Japan today will be discussed within the context of the general socio-economic trends with the aim of clarifying gains in the struggle to ensure equality for women as well as some of the challenges which lie ahead.Note: As this paper was written in the summer of 1984, the political situation has changed somewhat since then.