Changing Attitudes of Japanese Parties on Married Women in the Workforce

• In Event: The Substantive Representation of Women

Abstract

Many countries have experienced increased female labor force participation rates over recent decades; however, this does not necessarily mean that gender gaps in employment have become less salient, which is clearly illustrated in the case of Japan. The female labor force participation rate in Japan is higher than the OECD average, yet, married women remain a minority group among full-time workers. One-third of married women are unpaid full-time housewives, although this rate is declining, and another one-third are low-paid, part-time workers. The rate of married women who partake in the part-time work force has doubled in the last three decades.
Previous studies on political parties and gender indicate that the attitudes of right-wing parties toward gender issues differ from those of left-wing parties. While left-wing parties in Western countries became supportive of policies for women in the workforce in the late 20th century, right-wing parties tended to favor policies for women engaged in traditional, differentiated gender roles (Verba et al. 1987; Lovenduski and Norris 1993; Korpi 2000). With this said, however, some right-wing parties have recently begun to catch up with the left (Celis and Childs 2014). These arguments may also be applicable to Japan. The conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has maintained power in Japan since it was founded in 1955, except for brief intervals. Over the past few decades, the LDP may have had a more positive attitude towards policies for women engaged in unpaid care work, compared to the leftist opposition parties. As such, this attitude may be one of the factors that has led to the current situation facing women in Japan. Nevertheless, how the Japanese parties’ attitudes toward gender issues were different, and how they have changed over time, are yet to be fully explored.
This study aims to capture the differences and changes of the parties’ attitudes toward gender issues, and thereby contribute to the understanding of Japan’s policies from a gendered perspective, as well as to the literature on political parties and gender. To explore the parties’ attitudes, I focused on the spousal tax exemption system, which has been regarded as benefitting housewives. I conducted a text analysis of politicians’ official statements, which were obtained from the full-text database of the National Diet session proceedings. Building on previous studies, policies can be arranged into three categories: (1) policies for women in unpaid care work, (2) policies for women in the workforce, and (3) policies not directly targeted at women. Thus, I selected all statements made by Diet members from the 1960s to 2010s that proposed reforms of the spousal exemption system, and categorized them according to their alleged purposes.
This analysis reveals that the attitudes of the right- and left-wing parties in Japan mostly followed the pattern observed in Western countries. When married women started to enter the labor market, the left-wing parties became supportive of policies for women in the workforce, while the LDP did not; however, the LDP caught up with the left-wing parties to a certain degree after the 1980s.
Contrary to common perceptions, this analysis shows that the LDP politicians have rarely, if ever, proposed reforms targeted at full-time housewives, although the reforms actually benefitted such women. The LDP was not supportive of policies for women in unpaid care work during the 1960s and 1970s, but rather, was indifferent to policies for women. In the 1980s, the LDP, as well as the leftist parties, focused on policies directed towards married women with jobs, especially those with part-time jobs, and as such, proposed a system expansion in the direction of including these women as beneficiaries. Such an expansion consists of a two-sided effect on married women’s employment. Although such an expansion removes the initial barrier to enter the labor market, it gives incentives to limit working hours, in order to stay in the system. This coincides with the reality of the rapid increase in low-paid, part-time workers among married women. The findings suggest that the right-wing party’s positive attitude on policies for women in the workforce, instead of women in unpaid care work, may be one of the factors leading to the expansion of the system, and therefore, to the current situation of women in Japan.

References
Celis, Karen, and Sarah Childs, eds. 2014. Gender, Conservatism and Political Representation. Colchester: ECPR Press.
Korpi, Walter. 2000. “Faces of Inequality: Gender, Class, and Patterns of Inequalities in Different Types of Welfare States.” Social Politics, 7(2): 127-191.
Lovenduski, Joni, and Pippa Norris, eds. 1993. Gender and Party Politics. London: Sage Publications.
Verba, Sidney, Steven Kelman, Gary R. Orren, Ichiro Miyake, Joji Watanuki, Ikuo Kabashima, and G. Donald Ferree, Jr. 1987. Elites and the Idea of Equality. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Author

• Miki Toyofuku, Ochanomizu University