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Paper short abstract

This paper explores early postwar debates over Simone de Beauvoir’s notion of sexual equality through financial independence. Even women who agreed with this idea found it unrealistic given widespread sex discrimination, leading some to explore alternate visions of liberation through fiction.

Paper long abstract

In The Second Sex (1949), the French feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir famously prescribed work outside the home as a key component of modern women’s liberation. Freedom through a satisfying career and financial independence sounded good, and Beauvoir made it look easy. But Japanese women soon realized it wasn't. As Japan’s economic recovery increasingly depended on a gendered division of labor that kept wives as home so their husbands could labor to build “Japan, Inc.,” postwar Japanese feminists argued among themselves about how or whether women should seek professional roles outside the home.

This paper explores the way Japanese women in the 1950s and 1960s engaged with Beauvoir’s feminism, focusing on the shifting significance of her ideal of “liberation through work.” While the postwar constitution theoretically guaranteed women equality of opportunity in education and employment, they struggled against a host of societal barriers to capitalize on these new rights and freedoms. Mainstream media fanned the flames of resentment toward young women who gained entrance to prominent universities, on the argument that they were taking places away from young men who deserved those opportunities more. Once they graduated and started looking for work, young women found that companies blatantly posted "no women" clauses in their want ads, in flagrant violation of labor laws and constitutional guarantees of equality. Those who somehow managed to find employment in keeping with their qualifications faced virulent harassment and discrimination on the job. Married women, and particularly those with children, faced additional hurdles. It was hard to feel "liberated" when having a career meant facing a second shift of housework and child care upon returning home. Even childless wives found themselves taking care of husbands and prioritizing their partners' careers when "necessary," which was pretty much all the time. And though women writers envisioned a myriad of fictional worlds where societal and technological change would help to even the playing field—from affordable child care to male pregnancy and artificial wombs—somehow the idea of men sharing the burden of housework seemed the most fantastical of all possible solutions.