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- Convenors:
-
Annette Schad-Seifert
(Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf)
Nora Kottmann (German Institute for Japanese Studies)
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- Chair:
-
Nora Kottmann
(German Institute for Japanese Studies)
- Section:
- Anthropology and Sociology
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 25 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Brussels
Short Abstract:
This panel explores the work-life choices of young adults in metropolitan Japan. It focuses on attitudinal changes, the differentiation of gender norms, and new forms of work and family life in the context of changing socio-economic realities.
Long Abstract:
Japan's post-war male breadwinner model, which supposes a specific gendered division of labour at home and gender-segregated forms of employment, is increasingly losing significance as a social norm, giving way to attitudinal changes, the differentiation of gender norms, and new forms of work and family life. Indicators for change are an increase in the proportion of never-married and divorced single persons, married dual-earner couples, full-time househusbands and career women, unmarried mothers and fathers, male part-timers or 'freeters' without steady employment, and other non-heteronormative types of social existence.
The panel brings together anthropological and sociological researchers from Germany, Israel, Japan and the United Kingdom and aims to develop a gender-sensitive framework for analysing agency and capability with regard to work-life choices. Relying in part on economist Amartya Sen's capabilities approach (1992) to consider the divide between an individual's aspirations/expectations and the economic, social, and normative constraints on realizing them, it seems worthwhile to develop a framework for analysing agency and capability in connection with work-life choices. The panel also draws on the notion of 'undoing gender' (Deutsch 2007, Sullivan 2006), which focuses on interactions between state, metropolitan or private business institutions and individual behaviour such as partnership, intimacy, the gendered division of household labour, and the different identities surrounding singlehood. The panel will explore how individuals cope with social norms that are about to lose institutional sustainability. Questions at the core of this panel include how individuals negotiate their life choices as ideal or intended options, whether gender imbalances or gender-specific choices still exist, what kind of consequences individuals face when making specific life choices, and whether there are institutional restrictions or frameworks when choosing a specific life course. Ethnographic case studies and quantitative data will provide insights into individuals' work-life choices in the context of changing socio-economic realities.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 25 August, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
This paper investigates the association between education and the time spouses spend on housework and childcare in Japan between 1991 and 2016. Wives spend much more time on domestic work than husbands. Better educated people are leading a slow shift to greater gender equality at home.
Paper long abstract:
This paper investigates how the association between education and the gender division of labour in housework and childcare has changed in Japan since the 1990s, using quinquennial Japanese national time use surveys from 1991-2016. Wives continue to spend much more time on all types of domestic work than husbands throughout these years, but the link between education and time spent on housework and childcare has changed for both genders. Better education became associated with more time spent on housework for men and less time for women from 2006, and more time spent on childcare by both genders after 2001. The gender gap in housework and childcare contributions in Japan remains consistent with gender specialisation theory. However, over time better educated men and women have led a shift to somewhat more gender-equal housework contributions suggesting that educational attainment may translate into normative shifts in attitudes to domestic roles of husbands and wives. When it comes to childcare mothers and fathers with higher educational qualifications are spending increasingly longer time with their children. Here educated mothers', rather than fathers' contributions to childcare time have risen particularly sharply between 1991 and 2016. Overall the association between education and longer time spent on childcare is consistent with shifts to more intensive parenting practices observed mothers and fathers with tertiary education throughout European and Anglophone societies. The fact that better educated women boost their childcare time more than highly educated men in Japan points to the persistence of social norms that make children virtually exclusively their mothers' responsibility.
Paper short abstract:
Based mainly on in-depth interviews with men who "proactively" (shutai-teki) define themselves as "househusbands", and with their bread-winning wives, the paper will lend new perspectives to concepts of "doing" and "undoing" gender, hopefully as a further step in the study of change.
Paper long abstract:
Japan is currently experiencing growing public interest in new definitions of men - especially fathers - and their participation in family life. This discourse is captured by the popular neologism ikumen, which presents fathers actively involved in childcare (ikuji) as "cool" men. Other recent trends relate to the "work style reform" (hatarakikata kaikaku) introduced by the Japanese government in 2016, and to an emerging public discourse, encompassing both the State and the corporate sector, about Japanese society's work-life balance. Against this shifting background, this paper will ask whether an emerging (albeit still a small minority) phenomenon, families who have discarded the strongly embedded gender division of "Men at work, women at home," can be conceptualized in terms of "undoing gender." By bringing forward this particular form of heteronormative partnership, and contextualizing it within the discourse and reality of a search for new balance between family and work, the paper hopes to trouble conventional understandings of masculinity, femininity and gender (Deutsch 2007) - hopefully as a further step in the study of change.
The presentation is grounded in extended ethnographic study of the contemporary ikumen phenomenon. The research draws on multi-sited fieldwork, and incorporates analysis of a range of relevant materials - including increasingly generous child-care leave policies for fathers, and the expanding discourse regarding a more gender-equal and balanced relationship between work and family. The principal data source for this presentation is in-depth interviews conducted with men who explicitly and "proactively" (shutai-teki) define themselves as "househusbands", and with their wives - most of the latter in fulltime employment and the family's main breadwinner.
Proposing an in-depth inquiry of the concepts, division of labor, and ideology that inform this newly-emerging phenomenon, questions will be posed vis-à-vis the "corporate gender contract" that came to epitomize the "standard Japanese family": a contract based on the metaphorical alliance of women as housewives, men as salarymen breadwinners, and the demanding corporate sector (Goldstein-Gidoni 2019). Observing men and women and the evolving relationships between them will lend new perspectives to concepts of "doing" and "undoing" gender.
Paper short abstract:
As young Japanese adults increasingly seem to search for "Managing Both Work and Family" as an ideal female life course, this paper focuses on the impact of social policies in mediating the relationship between women's full-time employment and the decision to have a family with children.
Paper long abstract:
Japan's Fifteenth National Fertility Survey (National Institute of Population and Social Security Research 2015), which is covering attitudes toward life course among young Japanese singles, has shown that the proportion of never-married women who choose "Managing both work and family" as an ideal life course is increasing. Similarly, the women's life course that most never-married men expect from their potential partner is the "working wife".
There is in fact a reported increase in full-time employed married Japanese women. This can be explained in part by the government's current policy to establish new types of employment in order to eliminate gender imbalances. As female careers are much more affected by specific demands from private life than men are in their employment, further research on the effect of social policy on full-time employed family women is deemed necessary. Studies on female regular employees have shown that some Japanese firms are relatively progressive in providing family benefits and leave systems alongside with positive action to promote married women with children. However, empirical research revealed that Japan is a country where women still have huge difficulties to reconcile full-time employment and childbearing due to domestic responsibilities. Managing both family and work very often means to primarily rely on kinship support from extended family rather than on husband's help or institutionalized child care system's support structure.
Thus, this paper focuses on the impact of social policies in mediating the relationship between women's economic resources such as full-time employment and the decision to have a family with children. Specifically, it is investigating how the recent reform of corporate working styles is functional in reducing gaps between women's ideal and intended work-life choices.
Paper short abstract:
Based on ongoing fieldwork in Tokyo this paper focuses on never married adults' 'doing single' and their search for 'normalcy' in a society where marriage continues to be highly idealized while experts are anticipating the emergence of a 'hyper-solo-society'.
Paper long abstract:
Getting married and starting a nuclear family with a highly gendered division of labour was the norm in post-war Japan and was reflected in the extremely high marriage rates. However, in the last 30 years marriage behaviour has changed significantly and Japanese experts are anticipating the emergence of a 'hyper-solo-society' (Arakawa 2019): More and more adults are staying single, possibly not getting married at all. While this development is highly problematized by the government, 'singles' are being increasingly discovered as a consumer group and various activities and events are being promoted under the label sorokatsu (solo activities). Against this background, this paper focuses on so-called singles (here: never married adults between 25 and 49) and explores how they actually 'do single', with an emphasis on the topics of '(not) relating' and '(not) belonging'. I address broader work-life choices as well as (quotidian) practices of intimacy (Jamieson 2011). Drawing on a review of the literature and ongoing long-term fieldwork in Tokyo (participant observations and interviews), I show how diverse the supposedly homogenous group of singles is. Their work-life choices and quotidian practices, often characterized by ambivalence and ambiguity, are an expression of individual aspirations as well as various constraints. Following the narratives of my interviewees, I argue that their doing single can be interpreted as a (re)negotiation of what's 'normal' and an indicator of the social change in times of flux.