JAPAN

Record numbers of female students, merely is it plenty?

The proportion of female students enrolled in Japan's universities is getting closer to half the student torso, with around i.91 one thousand thousand of the total four-year university enrolments recorded in the 2019 academic yr being women, or 45.five% – the highest share on record in Japan, according to a recent regime survey.

This compares to one.28 million women enrolled and 1.63 million men, or 43.ix% women, according to the previous 2018 survey.

However, the almanac teaching ministry survey, which this yr reflects the situation to May 2020, shows big differences in some areas. For example, most lxxx% of women enrolled in iv-year universities are studying liberal arts. Traditionally the most popular fields of study for women are education, literature, nursing and chemist's shop, where women graduates outnumber men.

In dissimilarity, men dominate the more prestigious areas in science, applied science, technology and mathematics (Stem). In scientific discipline, male students comprise 72%, with females at 28%. In technology, the divide was wider – with 84% male.

"The information shows that, while more women have four-year college degrees to enter the job market as equals, at that place is yet a clear divide that works confronting them," said Satoko Nagaoki, assistant professor of gender studies at Keio University.

At the highly competitive University of Tokyo, popularly referred to as Todai, women comprise only effectually xx% of the student trunk. The figure has remained stagnant for two decades at Japan's most respected higher education institution, despite changes made at Todai to encourage more than women.

For example, in 2017 the institution extended monthly housing subsidies upward to JPY30,000 (U.s.a.$290) for selected female students to back up new applicants and innovate promotions to encourage more women to apply.

Retired Todai professor and respected feminist, Chizuko Ueno, has long linked the gender imbalance to Japanese social norms that tie women to family responsibilities.

"The low effigy for women is despite plentiful bear witness that female person applicants accept college standard scores than their male person competitors," she said.

More women in four-yr colleges

The higher education sector is gender-divided based on social norms that expect males to enter four-year colleges and become the family breadstuff winners, while two-year colleges have long focused on female students.

The rising in women'southward enrolment has dented that trend. According to the education ministry, the number of two-yr colleges has dwindled to around 300 effectually the country from a high of more than 500 in the year 2000.

Masahiro Okui, an official at the ministry building of education, links the growth in women educatee numbers generally to the rise in college-educated parents in the country.

"There are now more than mothers with a four-year college education. They invest in the higher didactics aspirations of their daughters, and with the growth of smaller families, more parents will provide financial support to their daughters," he said.

The rising number of women opting for four-year colleges has been observed since 1981, a trend that experts view as an indication that Japanese women are eager to compete for lucrative careers.

But they as well indicate out that the gender divide is withal strong in higher education. For example, former professor Takayo Kano, chairperson of the Japanese Association for University for Women, an organisation that supports the evolution of women, explained that the turning point could be traced to the Equal Employment Opportunity Law passed in Japan in 1985.

"The promise of equality in the job market changed attitudes, encouraging more than women to utilize for competitive universities. Only the reality continues to be sobering," she said.

Japan's former prime minister, Shinzo Abe, made waves when he made female person empowerment a leading policy, often referred to equally 'Womenomics'. Abe pledged to heighten the ratio of women in leadership positions in politics and business organization management to 30% past 2020 – that target has at present been delayed by a decade. In the workplace few leadership positions are held by women.

A survey conducted for Reuters by Nikkei Research and reported on 15 October showed no female managers in one-fifth of Japanese companies.

Abe also promised an improved work-life balance that would attract more women to the workplace. But the results are not promising. The new cabinet, under Prime Government minister Yoshihide Suga, has but two female ministers, and women business relationship for fewer than x% of lawmakers in the determination-making lower house in the Diet, Japan's bicameral legislature.

The disparity is also apparent in the higher education sector. An education ministry building press release in December 2019 noted that male academics deemed for 82% of the most 70,000 professors in Japanese universities. Moreover, women researchers are fewer than 15% of the full number – less than half of the boilerplate amongst OECD countries.

Structural bigotry

Structural discrimination against women was also exposed in a lawsuit filed on 14 Oct by a group of women confronting St Marianna University School of Medicine in Kawasaki, Kanagawa prefecture, south of Tokyo. They had been rejected later on taking the archway exams between 2015 and 2018 and are demanding a total of JPY16.84 1000000 in compensation.

During a press conference last calendar month, a plaintiff said, "Nosotros should non exist discriminated confronting considering we are women. There is no excuse."

A tertiary-political party investigative committee looking into the medical school'south admission practices found that the university manipulated the test process in favour of men, where some tests were determined on indicate allocation based on application forms and documents. Women were given lower points in the same rank. The academy denies bigotry.

In the aftermath of the scandal that emerged in 2018 over gender-biased admissions at Tokyo Medical University and Juntendo University, the ministry of didactics carried out an investigation that revealed that x universities had discriminated against prospective applicants based on their gender. Lawsuits were filed past women against some of those universities

Labour chaser Yumi Itakura points to two lawsuits filed in Oct, each by male and female role-timers. They resulted in starkly different results, where female person attorneys lost their case for a group of women temporary workers demanding improve working conditions and access to bonuses equal to their full-time colleagues. In the other lawsuit, the male lawyer team representing postal male temporary workers won their example for equal working conditions.

More half of female person workers are employed as part-timers in Nippon'southward job market. "The gender bias is obvious and disheartening," Itakura said.