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Paper short abstract

This article examines how women’s organizations in Japan vary in political values, party support, and elite access. It finds that while these groups increasingly support progressive gender equality, their political engagement has shifted toward closer ties with Liberal Democratic Party.

Paper long abstract

Since the 1990s, the political environment surrounding the women’s movement in Japan has undergone substantial transformation. Landmark legislative developments—such as the enactment of the Basic Act for a Gender-Equal Society in 1999 and the Act on Promotion of Women’s Participation and Advancement in the Workplace in 2015—are sometimes cited as significant achievements attributable to the advocacy efforts of these organizations. At the same time, however, scholars and activists have raised critical concerns regarding the institutionalization of feminist claims, suggesting that the movement itself has become embedded within state structures, thereby losing its oppositional character and evolving into what has been termed “state feminism.” This article focuses on variation within the women’s movement itself, and examines what kinds of values and conceptions of equality women's organizations hold, which political elites they engage with to realize their policy goals, and how these patterns of engagement have shifted over time. By analyzing survey data on party support and access to political elites, this article reveals that, on the one hand, women’s organizations have increasingly embraced more progressive understandings of gender equality in terms of values. On the other hand, their patterns of elite engagement have shifted toward greater interaction with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). By tracing these changes from 1980 to 2018, the chapter sheds light on the evolving nature of feminist political engagement in Japan, as well as the broader implications of institutionalization for social movements operating within democratic contexts.