Japanese Women Reassess Gender Equity

The Japanese are one big family, it is often said. Small trends and changes in the family mood are amplified and exaggerated in the press--no matter if the trends are real or imagined. In fact, there is a whole industry, involving TV commentators, the print press, social scientists, and small businesses, that taps into these blips. One of the most salient trends I detected during my recent trip to Japan (visiting Tokyo, Yokohama, and Kushiro) was a subtle shift in the attitudes of young women toward gender equity.

A few weeks ago, the New York Times ran a story about a new trend in Japan--again whether it is real or imagined is debatable. The article (titled "With Jobs Scarce in Japan, Women Become Professional Flirts") said that some women are choosing to become hostesses in order to survive during the recession and that the image of hostessing as a job has gained some respectability. The article's sensational photo featured a single mother who works as a hostess (oh no, Japan's mothers are becoming prostitutes!).

I asked a Japanese friend, who is an MBA candidate in Japan, about this article and she said that the deeper issue is that single women in their late 20s and 30s are kicking up their search for financial stability. This drive includes doing previously shunned jobs or searching for husbands by engaging in "kon katsu" or "marriage hunting," which includes the use of websites that help women find men. Given the U.S. media's fondness for exoticizing Japan, what are we to make of this new trend? During my recent trip, I was eager to find out.

After talking with many people during this trip, my view is that this trend is both much ado about nothing and much ado about something very subtle, but not necessarily what one would expect on the surface. Keep in mind my view is based on conversations only, not quantitative analysis.

In one regard, this story is about nothing much or at least something that has been going on for a long time in Japan and in the world. Men and women need ways of finding spouses in all countries. Given Japan's ostensible shy culture, its society has developed indirect methods of match making. In the past, it was arranged marriages ("omiai"). In the recent past, it was singles parties at restaurants ("gokon"). In today's digital world, the newest version of this method is match making websites and other services that facilitate marriage hunting. No big change.

But in another regard, something else is going on here. Women seem to be reassessing gender equity. To understand, we have to go back about ten years. During the middle of Japan's "lost decade" of the 1990s and early 2000s, economic growth was weak and companies were trying to respond--as was the government. Policymakers and businesses appeared to have found a mutually beneficial solution: tap into Japan's under utilized resource--its women's human capital. From the policy community, this idea was captured by my former boss and former MITI official Nobuo Tanaka in his essay "Girls, Be Ambitious," published in the early 2000s. Here is his essay's sober conclusion:

Encouraging women to enter more fully into the labor force will increase competition for jobs at a time when Japan's unemployment rate is at a post-war high; salaries for male workers could suffer as a result. But two working family members instead of one, which is still more or less the norm in Japan, means more income for the household. Also, it could encourage the sharing of housekeeping chores and child-rearing, tasks which are really much more tiring than office work, as a famous female ex-MITI official once said.

One of our recent speakers, Goldman Sachs Japan Chief Strategist Kathy Matsui, remarked that she was surprised to discover it is not only Japanese labor conventions that keep women from participating more fully in the workforce, but a tangible lack of career aspirations among Japanese women themselves. In her investigations into the economic implications of Japanese women in the labor force, an area that she calls "Womanomics," she notes that fostering career ambition is something that must be addressed as well.

It is difficult to say whether this can, in fact, be addressed through policy: it may be an educational, or even simply a child-rearing, issue. But ambitiousness and career aspirations are very much a desirable characteristic in the upcoming generation of Japanese young women. There is no doubt that they can make a significant contribution to the economic restructuring of Japan, something that we, as well as all of you outside of Japan, are anxious to see emerge.

Meanwhile, from a businessman's perspective, this idea seemed appealing in that women could be hired part-time, thus the birth of another trend in Japan--the furita and arubaito (part time workers). It seemed to be a win-win-win situation--policymakers found a new resource for Japan's economy, businesses found new flexible labor, and women found a new role in the workplace and a new sense of equity. In fact, women could pursue a dream of becoming career women. But how did it turn out?

For some women, the dream was fulfilled--they found careers. For others, the dream was ephemeral--they found drudgery in part time work with no social safety net and no stability. The current recession is hitting these women especially hard as they are seen as expendable--thus the New York Times article about women trying previously undesirable types of professions. As my MBA friend put it, women are doing whatever it takes to find financial stability, whether it be in becoming hostesses or trying updated versions of the age-old match-making practice in Japan. Women are also re-thinking gender roles.

My sociologist friend puts it another way. There are two successful types of couple equity: (traditional) complementary relations where the man does certain tasks (say working full time) and the woman does other tasks (say shopping and raising children); and equal relations where both the man and the women pursue the same tasks (say careers, shopping, and raising children). For centuries, Japan has favored the complementary type of relationships and thus its society has been structured to facilitate it. The newer, equal relationship has had some negative consequences: some women chased their careers and now find themselves alone; or in some cases, raising children and pursuing a career has just proven untenable in Japanese society. As my friend put it, women's expectations and goals have changed and they are therefore reassessing what fairness means between the sexes.

Does this mean the drive for gender equality has failed in Japan? Was the push for women to chase careers misguided? It is too soon to tell. But all of this raises a subtle question. Equity, equality, fairness, and well-being are all virtuous goals for a society. Equality between the sexes and the dream of raising children in a happy home are reasonable goals. But as the Japanese case shows, they can be mutually exclusive.

Unfortunately, these trade offs are not unique to Japan either. In a recent phone call back home, I learned about the struggles of Washington's career women in their 30s. Loneliness has driven them to use the dreaded match-making websites. Is this a unavoidable byproduct of modern living?

(Photo by Devin Stewart)

Climate Change Fairness Questions Loom

Countries that buy Chinese exports (hint, hint, America and Japan) should be held responsible for the carbon emissions it took to manufacture those goods in climate change negotiations, according to a Chinese government statement this week. And the debate over what is fair in climate change talks heats up. Shinsuke Sugiyama of Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said 2009 will be a "make or break" year in achieving progress on a new global deal. Some scientists have even said we have passed that point.

Last month, when I traveled to Tokyo, I met with one of Toyota's senior executives in charge of climate change issues. He seemed comfortable speaking to the ethical concerns many in Japan have over climate change negotiations, suggesting that the very moral underpinnings of climate change negotiations are in debate.

He questioned the fairness of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). In the Kyoto Protocol, Japan has a target of reducing emissions by 6%, and Japan's industries have a "Voluntary Action Plan on the Environment." But Nippon Steel, a highly efficient company in steel production, still has to buy CDMs from less developed countries. Meanwhile, Mittal is the world's largest steel company but doesn't have to buy CDMs even though they bought European steel companies with weaker standards than Nippon Steel. This just goes to show that developing countries, under this scheme, can sell both steel and credits, he said.

Emission trading is a flexible mechanism to get to a target, so we can avoid free riders. In Japan, there are no free riders thanks to business association Keidanren, he said. He argued that Japan is different; it is a country that has other mechanisms to avoid free riding, using pressure through organizations, especially Keidanren. "It's more of a culture than a requirement," he said.

Japan, which sees itself as a nation of seafaring traders, generally questions the ethics of trading the right to emit CO2. This point has come up in multiple interviews, including with METI and Japan's New Energy Development Organization (NEDO). The Toyota official called CO2 a "fragile commodity. We don't like it. It's subprime. CO2 has no value, so any agreements are artificial, so we're doubtful."

A better alternative is proper regulations and harmonization of standards, he said. Toyota takes the "top runner approach" based on vehicle weight. For example, in 1998, JAMA started top runner and set a target, and top runner was the biggest program impact.

Can Japan's approach be used in China? Maybe not, the Toyota official said. The Chinese have no Keidanren and no democracy. Japan started regulations 1500 years ago, but China is always about "great men," not regulations. Also, Japan has a culture of avoiding waste (mottainai).

Many in Japan have questioned the fairness of expectations on Japan to reduce emissions when its industry has already become so efficient. It's not fair to Japan because Japan has already achieved efficiency, he said. Japan's Kyoto Protocol commitment—a 6 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions below the 1990 level by 2012—has been described by Japanese officials as akin to trying to wring water out of a dry towel.

The Toyota official asked: How can less developed countries be supported in conjunction with developed countries' targets? We have clean development mechanisms but some negotiators say rich countries should pay for everything, but that's not fair. Less developed countries always ask for money from developed countries, but developed countries can't afford it. We should substantially decrease emissions on our own and contribute to less developed countries. Most Japanese don't know these mechanism, so the government needs to explain it: how much of the target is their own effort or by their taxes? National costs borne by individual countries are hidden.

Finally, there is an intellectual property rights question about climate change mitigation technology. He said China may claim that these technologies are analogous to AIDS vaccines (they should be shared on behalf of the global public good) but watering down the property rights of this privately-developed technology could reduce incentives to innovate.

Photo: "stuffed japanese shop in Nagasaki chinese quarter" by colodio

Fairness on the Brain

Talking about ethics can be scary to some people. People wonder: Whose ethics? Am I ethical? Do I know what ethics is? When I give talks at universities, I therefore refer to the several studies that have shown that primates have an innate sense of fairness. Here is one article in National Geographic, "Monkeys Show Sense of Fairness, Study Says."

The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday on another study supporting this line of thought. The article, titled "Charting the Agony Of a Brain as It Struggles to Be Fair," says that neural analysis of the brain shows humans have a distaste for unfair situations. From the article:

To trigger the brain behavior, the 26 volunteers had to believe their decisions really would affect orphans being denied their seat at a groaning board of plenty where others feasted. So, the experimenters made them all study a 10-page brochure with pictures of 60 orphans.

In 36 rounds of testing, each subject had 10 seconds to choose the lesser of two evils: Allow some children to keep more than their fair share of meals or take away their food to eliminate inequity.

It was a measure of the economics of morality. Dr. Hsu made the inequities more or less severe by changing the number of meals donated to different groups of children. That provoked patterns of neural activation that revealed the brain's distaste for injustice and its willingness if the disparity was wide enough -- in one case, one child receiving five times more than another -- to punish the rich by putting them on short rations. To redress the extremes, people were willing to confiscate meals even when it hurt the orphanage as a whole, Dr. Hsu, now at the University of Illinois, reported recently at a meeting of the Society for Neuroeconomics in Nantasket, Mass.

Bill Gates: Reducing Inequity Is Top Priority

Bill Gates gave this inspiring commencement speech last week at Harvard. His central message is something that we would agree with at the Carnegie Council:

"...humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries – but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity – reducing inequity is the highest human achievement." He is calling for a fairer world, one in which people use discoveries but go further by applying them for good.

We would agree: The motto of this blog and our online magazine Policy Innovations is innovations + ethics = better globalization.

Now, it is the duty of higher education to teach students about these problems, to give students a more global perspective. It seems Gates saw some failure but also some hope in this regard:

"I left campus knowing little about the millions of young people cheated out of educational opportunities here in this country. And I knew nothing about the millions of people living in unspeakable poverty and disease in developing countries.

It took me decades to find out.

You graduates came to Harvard at a different time. You know more about the world’s inequities than the classes that came before. In your years here, I hope you’ve had a chance to think about how – in this age of accelerating technology – we can finally take on these inequities, and we can solve them."

Gates's hope is well founded, I think. As I have written here, here, and here, in just the eight years since I attended graduate school, I have noticed a remarkable embrace of social activism, and ethical and global awareness in the academy. This movement has something to do with this generation of students' rejection of cynicism pervasive in politics, disappointment in government's ability to provide solutions, and a reassessment of the role of the corporation in society. These are positive developments, and America can be proud of this generation of young people.

A top mission of Policy Innovations is to provide students with case studies of people and their ideas for global social justice. We are happy to hear of more and more schools putting our website on their syllabi and asking to hear our story.

Lack of Fairness a Globalization Risk

Creating a fairer globalization is not just the right thing to do, it is also a way of making the global economy more stable and sustainable. The Wall Street Journal ran an article on its front page today entitled, "Globalization's Gains Come With a Price--While Poor Benefit, Inequality Feeds A Backlash Overseas."

The piece confirms what we know: Contrary to economists' predictions, globalization is widening the income gap between the rich and poor in many poor countries:

"Globalization deserves credit for helping lift many millions out of poverty and for improving standards of living of low-wage families... But because globalization is also creating more inequality, it is raising questions about how much inequality countries can bear and whether these gaps could ultimately produce a backlash that will undermine trade and investment liberalization around the world."

And therein lies the rub. Lack of fairness is a risk to the current form of globalization. As a result of inequity, populist political candidates have gained ground in Latin America and China worries about social stability. The perfect quote is from Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao last March in which he says his government must "safeguard social fairness and justice and ensure that all of the people share in the fruits of reform and development."

On a related note, when I was in Shanghai last week, I asked a senior think tanker to name the biggest challenge facing Chinese society today. His answer was, "a lack of ethics." The Cultural Revolution left society with a vacuum in social values that is being filled by consumerism today. Corruption, lack of trust, and greed plague China.

It seems the Chinese government is even starting to get religion, literally. He and other Chinese officials have asked me about the positive role religion can play in providing an ethical framework in society. Given the rapidly growing Christian population in rural China, a solution may be in plain sight.



Christian church in China, seen from Shengyang to Harbin bus. Photo by Brian Yap (CC).