Gender Display Mismatch: Gender Role Reversal and Traditional Gender Norms in Japanese Narratives of Singlehood

• In Event: 379 - Section on Sociology of Sex and Gender Paper Session. Global Masculinities – Domination and Dispossession

Abstract

Rigid gender roles have increasingly given way to redefinitions of gender norms in many advanced industrialized nations. One variant of this can be seen in contemporary Japanese society among its growing ‘involuntarily single’ demographic, who have come to embody new gender labels that oppose traditional gender tropes. Based upon a larger qualitative study on contemporary Japanese singles that seek partnership formation, this article examines the singles’ paradoxically conservative stance in seeking more traditional gender roles as they navigate a historically new courtship terrain. The findings demonstrate the ways in which Japanese singles inadvertently embody the emerging reversal of gender roles whilst rejecting that in potential mates and how this has created what I call a “gender display mismatch” within potential romantic encounters. This article’s analysis of Japanese singles’ perceptions of partnership suitability within the interactional sphere of romantic encounters serves to ground discussions of larger demographic shifts occurring in contemporary Japanese society, such as, the ‘crisis’-level decline in birthrate often attributed to prevalent marriage postponement and increased rates of non-marriage.

Author

• Kumiko Endo, The New School for Social Research