Suchergebnisse

Japan hat im Politikfeld Geschlechtergleichstellung – gender equality – seit der Unterzeichnung der UN-Konvention zur Beseitigung jeder Form von Diskriminierung der Frau (1979) Maßnahmen mit beachtlichen Zielen beschlossen – insbesondere gilt dies für das Basic Law for a Gender-equal SocietyGlobal Gender Gap Report 2013. Diese Studie fragt nach den Gründen für die Diskrepanz zwischen Zielen und Politikergebnis von Programmen für gender equality in Japan. Vorannahmen sind, dass, erstens, der geringe Erfolg auf die Phase der Implementierung zurückzuführen ist, und zweitens, dass die Präfekturen, die im Zuge von Dezentralisierungsreformen in den 1990er Jahren formal einen Bedeutungszugewinn als eigenständige Vollzugsträger erfahren haben, dabei eine wichtige Rolle spielen. Exemplarisch vergleicht die Politikfeldanalyse Implementierungsprozesse des Basic Law for a Gender-equal Society in den Präfekturen Nagasaki und Shiga – Fallbeispiele, deren Implementierungsstrategien mit sehr unterschiedlichem Erfolg zu verlaufen scheinen. Drei Zielsetzungen leiten die Analyse: Neben einer Bestandsaufnahme der Umsetzung werden mögliche, auf Akteure und institutionellen Rahmen bezogene Gründe, die den Erfolg der Implementierung beeinträchtigen, sowie Faktoren für besonders hohen outcome, insbesondere durch progressive Selbstverwaltungsinitiativen, herausgearbeitet.

In the aftermath of the triple disaster of March 11, 2011, concerned parents throughout Japan formed over 300 social movement organizations nationwide for the protection of children from radiation. Especially mothers have become active within that organizational network. For many of them, it is their first time to become politically active. Their activism runs counter to the public discourse, which more so than ever constructs and idealizes mothers as "silent protectors of the family". Motherhood and political activism are opposing each other in these constructs, yet are intricately linked with each other as well. For two years, we conducted fieldwork among members of one Tokyo-based civil society organization, in order to analyze the strategies of participation of Japanese mothers and to examine how gender roles are played out between mothers and their "opponents", all of them male representatives of "the state". We evaluated the findings within the conceptual framework of social capital and advocacy. We find that the group members build up strong social capital but remain at a weak level of advocacy regarding their interaction with local authorities. This seemingly weak advocacy is however a desired state of movement action chosen by mothers who deliberately pursue a strategy of small but long-term approach.

As the socialization, privatization, and internationalization of health-caregiving proceeds, in many industrialized nations the health-care business, which was often a gendered labor market to begin with, is now evolving as a labor market at the intersection of gender and ethnicity. This paper addresses a bipolar concept of invisibility-and potential vulnerability-of female labor migrants through the lens of gender and ethnicity in the health-care labor market in Japan. It does so by introducing the roles both dimensions play in Japan's labor market in general and in the health-care sector in particular. Juxtaposing two different groups, namely longtime foreign residents of Japan entering the health-care business as a second career option on the one hand and newly arrived health-caregivers from Southeast Asia on the other hand, the paper first highlights the commonalities and differences in the way gender and ethnicity impact the structures of life and work in Japan for the two groups. Secondly, the paper looks at the interlocking dimension of gender and ethnicity and provides some insights into the intersectionality of these factors in Japan's labor world. (Asien/GIGA)