There is a large gap between Japan’s ranking on indicators of economic development and on indicators of gender equality. This book helps us to understand why.
The chapters in this volume illuminate important dimensions of gender inequality in Japan – in relation to class, and in comparison to other countries. The book considers the relation of gender inequality to neoliberal policies, and the implications of gender inequality for social reproduction. It demonstrates the ways in which leading Japanese scholars are debating and analysing these issues, in dialogue with feminist economists from Mexico and UK.
The chapters in this book were originally published in The Japanese Political Economy.
Introduction: Feminism and Gender Research in Japan
Diane Elson
1. Why do Japanese women suffer from the low status?: The impact of neo- liberalist reform on gender
Chizuko Ueno
2. Impact of Marxist feminism on Japanese women’s movement: Focusing on the domestic labor debates
Kumiko Ida
3. Gender equality, paid and unpaid care and domestic work: Disadvantages of state- supported marketization of care and domestic work
Sumika Yamane
4. Development, gender, and asymmetries between Mexico and Japan
Alicia Girón
5. Intersections of gender and class in the distribution of income
Diane Elson
6. The reproductive crisis in neoliberal capitalism: Commenting on D. Elson’s recent paper
Makoto Itoh
Biography
Diane Elson is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex. She has published widely on gender and development. She was awarded the Leontief Prize for Advancing Frontiers of Economic Thought, 2016, and the International Book Prize, Japan Society of Political Economy, 2018.
