Would the Abe Administration Like to Utilize Women? ---Chizuko’s Blog No. 62

A reporter from the political desk in the Asahi Shinbun interviewed me about “the utilization of women” by the Abe administration. Maybe it was my first interview with a political desk.

 

Most of the comments in the articles on “the utilization of women” are made by female managers or entrepreneurs. This issue influences these women directly.

 

I just wondered why they don’t ask female part-time workers and temporary workers. So I asked the reporter, and he said, “Now that you mention it, it makes me wonder too.”

 

He told me that the business news desk dealt with it because it was a labor issue. The newspaper company seems vertically divided like the administrative functions.

 

But the political desks should also discuss the government’s policies. Their policies include labor and welfare policies. If they don’t examine the issues and just write what politicians say, they should be called “the politicians’ desks” or “the government’s desks.”

I heard that the government is monitoring the mass media, but they didn’t complain about my comment. I guess that’s because the comment reflects nothing but the reality.

 

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Abe Considers Women as the “Convenient Workforce”

 

Prime Minister Abe intends to “utilize women” in the workforce. But he aims to take advantage of them conveniently and actually shows no respect for women’s rights. With the overall workforce running short because of the declining birthrate, women are the last resource the government can use. Abe’s method of “utilizing women” is to force women who are capable of doing so to work as hard as a man, while those who are family-oriented are employed as temporary workers and then thrown away like disposable items.

 

The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in the UN has long been recommending the Japanese government to let couples have separate surnames and to eliminate the discrimination against illegitimate children. However, the LDP has neglected this. In particular, the Abe administration is one of the most rightist governments that Japan has ever had. It asserts firmly that “a family is the foundation of the nation.” They railroaded the Act on the Protection of Specially Designated Secrets. This fact seems to show that the LDP is getting even less and less liberal.

 

Abe advocates the amendment of the Public Office Election Act to raise the proportion of female lawmakers in the Diet, but it can only be achieved if more women run  office. Why can he tell companies to name more women to be executives when he is reluctant to make such little effort himself?

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Original Article Written by Chizuko Ueno (http://wan.or.jp/ueno/?p=3734)
Tranlated by N. Tajima