Example Research Report

Gender Inequality in Japan

My Starting Story and Interests

My dream in the future is to become a working mother. I want to rear children and I do not want to give up my working career at the same time. However, I feel it is very tough to be a working mother here in Japan, because I have heard that many women workers retire their job when they get married or have children. Actually, my mother retired her full-time job when she got married and she became full-time homemaker. She restarted working as a part-time worker about 10 years ago, because my younger sisters grown up to be elementary school students and my mother thought that she can work during the daytime when her children go to school.

Talking about my family more, the figure of my father made me question about what the role of fathers is. I have rarely seen my father’s doing housekeeping, even after my mother restarted working. I imagine that he does not know how to cook, clean up, do laundry, and any other house chore, because he has never lived alone until he got married to my mother, and his mother (my grandmother) can do everything by herself like a perfect full-time housemaker in Showa period. However, these days, the new words “ikumen” or “househusband” appeared, and I hope the social attitude is changing against traditional gender norms.

This situation above made me think about I want to change this society to the society which more women can keep working and being mother at the same time. So, I decided to research about gender equality in Japan.

My Research Focus

I think we need to consider many different issues when we address gender inequality in Japan. I can list up, variety forms of harassment against both women and men, gender pay gap, and domestic unpaid work. These kinds of issues are pointed out these days by media a lot. I think we can classify the issues of gender inequality into two types, one happens at the working places, and another is in the domestic world.

In this research, I want to focus on gender inequality in working places, because I guess the situation of gender inequality in the workplace is easier to change compared with the situation in domestic. The domestic is really closed place, so it is difficult for outsiders to change the situation. On the contrary, workplaces are more opened places and the outsiders including administrations can involve changing the situation.

I want to focus on maternity harassment specifically, because I do not want to be victimized and I feel that maternity harassment symbolizes gender inequality in the workplace, more to say, traditional gender norms in the society.

My Research Questions

What is the working situation and environment in Japan?
What makes mothers difficult to keep working in Japan?
How can we support working mothers?

Stories of Maternity Harassment

「時短だからと言って、肌感でお給料が1/3カットくらいになって、初任給を下回ったことがあります。（その後交渉して、できる限り産休前のレベルに近い額に戻してもらいました）。また、自分の結婚式ではありませんが、役員が結婚式で『子供ができたら大変（戦力として重視していると言いたかったのだと思う）』とか、『子供はタイミングを見て作っていただいて…』というようなことを祝辞で言っていてドン引きしました」（yuuuuuさん／30歳）

「（妊娠を報告したとき）困った顔をされるだけで、誰もおめでとうと言ってくれませんでした。迷惑なんだ…というのが伝わりすぎて、どんなにしんどくても休めなかったです。“命”と“嫌味”は本来、比較するものではないはずなのに…。あと、ハラスメントと言えるかわかりませんが、出産後に会社から出産祝い金をいただきました。でも、どういう規定なのか、金額は3,750円でした。小銭が入っていること自体、意味がわかりません。むしろ0円でよかった」（やまさん／39歳）

From Cosmopolitan, 2020/02/28

What is the definition of matahara?

According to Stamp out maternity harassment, the definition of matahara is both mental and physical abuse of pregnant and post pregnant women in the workforce. Matahara causes not only mental problems, it also can cause immense stress that results in miscarriages and premature births. matahara.net points out that women have to follow three checkpoints to work during pregnancy. First is reporting the pregnancy, second is taking leave, and third is returning to work. After women come through checkpoints above, they still need to fight against mummy track. Mummy track is the career course which women can keep working with childrearing, but far from getting promotions. This problem happens often for working mothers because most of the time, they need to use short time working system and then, they work as auxiliary roles.

What is the maternity harassment situation in Japan?

The survey about matahara experiences conducted by Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare in 2015 on the right shows that 48.7% of temporary workers and 21.8% of full-time workers have experienced matahara. In those victims, 54.4% have gotten matahara experiences even when they were healthy, which means they did not make trouble for the workplace because of their body conditions. However, 47.3% of pregnant women were criticized with the words such as “You are troublesome, annoying” or “Why don’t you retire the job?”, and 20.5% of women were discharged because of their pregnancy. Looking at this data above, I found that irregular workers tend to get matahara more than regular workers. I think it is because Japanese working society regards irregular workers as easier to replace and having less right than the regular workers. In most of the time, it is said that irregular workers or temporary workers have less responsibility on the job and get much less payment than the regular workers

What are the types and causes of matahara?

According to matahara.net, which is the organization to support the matahara victims, there are two main types of matahara:「個人型」 (individual type) and 「組織型」 (organization type). These are shown in the graphic above. Individual type is matahara caused by the direct bosses and co-workers, and includes 「昭和の価値観押し付け型」 (forcing the stereotype from the Showa-period) and 「いじめ型」 (bullying type). Organization type is matahara caused by the administration and the human resources, and includes 「パワハラ型」 (power harassment type) and 「追い出し型」 (driving workers out of the working place type).

Type 1: Forcing the stereotype from the Showa-period /「間違った配慮上司」

This type’s offenders say that “You should think about your baby at first.”, “I say it because I am worried about your body condition.”, “Your husband can earn money so that you do not need to keep working.”, and then, “So, why don’t you retire the job?” The offenders believe that women should think about family at first and become a full-time housekeeper, because it is the best happiness for all women. This is what is called the stereotype from the Showa-period (old-fashioned). They are not taking it into account of that women’s will and just forcing their stereotyped thought. This type of matahara is caused by the male boss in the most of cases.

Type 2: Bullying

This type’s offenders say that “You are troublesome and annoying.”, “I’m jealous of you that you can get time off because of your pregnancy.”, “You are selfish to become a pregnant.”, “You are cheating.” Most of the offenders of this type are the victim’s co-workers. They get angry about the extra burden caused by pregnancy, childbirth and rearing children workers. The offenders think it is unfair, so that they attack to the victims, but actually these feelings should face to the managers who divide work to the workers. I believe the bosses’ roles is to make equal and friendly working environment for all subordinates. If someone wants to take any kind of leave, there should be some extra work for co-workers. To make friendly working environment for workers who wants to take leave, matahara.net believes that the managers or company should rethink about evaluation for co-workers who support leaving workers or create new system for every worker can take leave for variety of reasons. Maternity leave is one of the good chances for companies to review the working condition.

Type 3: Power Harrassment

This type’s offenders say that “Short time workers should not be allowed.”, We do not need a full-time worker who goes home in the evening, earlier than the other workers and not doing overtime work.”, “We do not treat you as special even if you are pregnant.” The offenders force the employees who cannot work for long hours to work longer, which is power harassment. And also, the atmosphere at the workplace does not welcome use of the system of maternity and childcare leave and working shorter. This type seems to be caused by the Japanese traditional labor culture, which is long hours workers are regarded as mature workers, but short hours workers with child rearing are regarded as immature workers.

Type 4: Driving the workers out of the workplace

This type’s offenders say that “It is inconvenient of you that you cannot work overtime.”, “You should retire the job when you get children.”, “There are no systems of maternity and childcare leave in this company.” The company try to exclude the part-time workers from the working environment. Many cases of matahara are categorized in this type. Actually, there are many companies where no one has ever taken maternity and childcare leave, and all of the pregnant workers were discharged.

What I've learned

I found that the law itself cannot necessary change the situation. There is the law to tackle with the issue of gender inequality especially about the matahara problem, but actually it is not working well to change the situation. I thought the situation of gender inequality might be better than the issues of gender minority people, foreign workers and child poverty, at least the law exists to protect the women. From the discussions and the presentations, I have learned that making the law does not mean to change the situation. I was so curious why matahara still continues even it is illegal, but now I feel that illegalizing or legalizing the issues and problems is not the final answer.

And I have learned from my classmates’ presentation about the importance and influence of media both in good ways and bad ways. I have not researched about the effects of media related to gender inequality in Japan. After I listened to the others’ presentation and a question asked to me, I felt media might play an important role as making the gender roles and social norms.

In a summary, the law is just rules and sentences, which means it cannot change the people’s thoughts, feelings and actions. Just making the law or social rules do not change the society. I think, what is the most important thing is we find ourselves as a piece of society and change our minds.

My new interests and questions

I want to research about gender pay gap for the next research cycle. This is because I think gender pay gap has huge relationship between gender roles. After I had a conversation with my classmate to share our research at the class, I found that there is connection between poverty of women and gender pay gap. Before I had a talk with her, I was not interested in the issue of payment or poverty of women. Thanks to her, I realized that gender roles is deeply connected to gender pay gap and poverty. I want to know why gender roles was made and why it still continues through this cycle’s research and the next cycle’s research topic.