Basic statistics on women in Japan

Note: the numbers below will vary according to which source one consults, and some will even vary depending on what part of the country is being examined, so do not take this as etched in stone.

Lifespan

Average lifespan: 84 years (7 more than males) (Source: Kimono in the Boardroom: The Invisible Evolution of Japanese Women Managers1999

Laws and Women

The same source has some interesting information on laws relating to women in the U.S. and Japan.

For example, women got the right to vote in the U.S. in 1920 (although there is no good reason at all it should have taken that long); in Japan, women didn't get the right to vote until 1945, after the end of the war. Japanese women got the right to enter state and national universities in 1946, also after the end of the war. American women had that right since 1776.

An Equal Employment Opportunity Law was enacted in Japan in 1985, while in the U.S. it was part of the civil rights struggle, being enacted in 1964. (Material I have read about some Japanese laws, though, indicates that often the laws have no actual teeth to them). Japan singed the UN Convention on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women in 1985. The U.S. so far has refused to sign it.

Children

Average number of children born: 1.39 as of 1998 (although this varies by the city). (Source: Kimono in the Boardroom: The Invisible Evolution of Japanese Women Mangers1999

Mathematically, a birth rate of 2.0 will result in a stable population (one child replaces the mother, one the father, in effect.) Rates higher than 2.0 will result in a growing population. The Japanese rate, being only 1.39 or so, will result in a decreasing population. One source I read stated that, in 600 years, there will only be 480 Japanese left alive due to the declining birth rate.(Although how they figured that out is beyond me), while a different source said that in a thousand years there will be no actual Japanese left.

Average age of women when she has her first child: 28 years

Marriage and Divorce

Divorce rate? 14.5% (U.S. rate is 47%)

Percent of marriages that are arranged: 15%

Number 2 reason that Japanese women seek divorce: domestic violence. (Incompatible personalities is the number one reason)

Housework

Average time spent on housework (food shopping, meal preparation, dish washing) in 1959: 191 minutes; clothing care 127 minutes; cleaning 87 minutes; other housework, 37 minutes, Total: 7 hours and 22 minutes per day. Total time spent on housework in 1989: 5 hours 55 minutes. (Source: The Japanese Woman: Traditional Image and Changing Reality, 1993

What women look for in a man

The average woman is looking for a man who fits the three H's, also known as the three highs. The man should be physically tall, have a large salary, and be a graduate of a high-status university.

In the book Dimensions of Japanese Society: Gender, Margins and Mainstream, 1999, there is a very interesting breakdown of what women want in an ideal male in Japan and in the U.S.

31% of Japanese women site generosity as the most important trait of a man, while only 4% of the U.S. women agree. (38% of U.S. women site a loving/caring nature as the #1 trait)

44% of Japanese women want a man who most values a balanced, rounded life, whereas 63% of American women want a man who most values home and family.

58% of Japanese women want to marry a man older than them, whereas 52% of American women want to marry a man about the same age.

As to a man's free time, 33% of Japanese women site pursuing a hobby as the most desirable trait, whereas 46% of American women site spending time with the children as the most valuable trait.

There is a lot of agreement between women in the two countries on several traits, though. "He makes me feel good about myself" is the number 1 trait in the category "What attracts him to most to him." Women of both countries prefer jewelry over flowers as an ideal gift, and both would prefer his job to be a top business executive (although this over twice as important to Japanese women.)

One other area of agreement is in the reaction of a woman to a man's flirting with another woman. When asked about what a man's response to a woman's coming on to him should be, 45% of U.S. women site flirting back a little as the best trait, but 76% of Japanese women site that as number one.

Women and Marriage

Average age at which Japanese women marry: 26 in 1992. "At twenty-five years of age, a Japanese woman is called ‘a Christmas cake,' something for which there is no use after the twenty-fifth." Unmasking Japan Today: the Impact of Traditional Values on Modern Japanese Society, 1996. The figure is some three years later than the age of first marriage during the 1930's.

"Women between twenty-five and thirty-five are enjoying the single life-marrying later, divorcing more freely, and having fewer children later. Between 1975 and 1990, the percentage of women between the ages of twenty-five and twenty-nine who had spouses decreased from 80.3 percent (1975) to 84.5% (1985) to 57.5% (1990)> The percentage of women in the thirty to thirty-four-year-old age group without spouses was 20 percent for Tokyo and 10 percent for the country as a whole in 1985. The birth rate for the country as a whole decreased from 1.76 to 1.53 between 1985 and 1990 and in Tokyo from 1.4 to 1.24 over the same period." Re-Imaging Japanese Women, 1996

In other words, more and more women are choosing not to get married but to stay single. Many continue to live with their parents and their expenses thus are not as high as if they were married.

So for those women who are considering marriage, or are married, what do they consider to be the conditions necessary for a good marriage? A 1990 survey came up with some interesting comparisons between Japanese and American women.

31% of women think that their spouse would like the same kind of life, activities and friends as they do but over twice as many American women, 64%, site that as an important factor.

Whereas 87% of American women think being in love is necessary for a good marriage, only 68% of Japanese women think it is needed.

A huge difference is found when considering whether keeping romance alive is important. 78% of American women think it is and only 29% of Japanese women think it's necessary for a good marriage.

Having a good sexual relationship also shows a major difference. 72% of American women think it's important to a marriage but only 38% of Japanese women do. Sexual fidelity also differs widely, with 85% of American women saying it's important but only 46% of Japanese women think it's needed for a good marriage.

A sense of humor has a two to one difference also, with 76% of American women thinking it's important in their marriage and only 38% of Japanese women consider it's important. (Statistics from The Japanese Woman: Traditional Image and Changing Reality, 1993

For those husbands involved in sexual infidelity, it generally takes one of two forms. One is the use of prostitutes (which can include local ones and the "sex tours" that some men take of Thailand, the Philippines and other countries), and secondly a more long-term affair with another woman. The use of love motels can make carrying on this type of affair much easier.

Another interesting thing to consider is the actual cost of getting married in Japan which, in 1992, was over $80,000. Unmasking Japan Today: The Impact of Traditional Values on Modern Japanese Society, 1996 This relates to wedding packages that are generally bought which will include a reception at a fancy hotel, a huge wedding cake and even changes of clothing for the couple.

In relation to working after the birth of a child "the majority of married women in Japan (59 percent) still believe that they should discontinue working once they give birth to their first child, then return to the labor force only after the completion of child rearing." Unmasking Japan Today: The Impact of Traditional Values on Modern Japanese society, 1996

The same source examines the gender breakdown of work being done at home and comes up with these numbers: women do 91.3% off cleaning/laundry; 91.5% of meal preparation; 84.7% of dish washing; 83.8% pay the bills, and 84.9% do the grocery shopping.

Battered Wives

The same source talks about abuse towards wives, and notes that "In a 1992 survey of 795 women, nearly 8 in every 10 attested to some form of physical, psychological, and/or sexual abuse by their husbands." That, by any form of interpretation you want to use, is still a shockingly high rate of violence.

Women also form 68% of all part-time workers as of 1996.

According to the book Japanese Women: New Feminist Perspectives on the Past, Present and Future, 1995, women hold only 7.5% of all positions in newspaper companies, and only 1.4% of women are reporters. In private broadcasting companies, women hold only 18.5% of the positions with only .4% of them as reporters, .7% as directors, and 2.2% as announcers. In the Japan Broadcasting Corporation, women constitute even less of a percentage of workers, at only5.9%. Only .2% are reporters, 1.1% directors, and .2% announcers, making women a grossly under-represented portion of the mass media positions.

The same source points out a problem that has resulted from the slowdown in the Japanese economy, and that is the employment percent of women university graduates which had been 86% in 1991 but dropped to 76% in 1993. The source notes that one in three companies did not hire any female university graduates at all in 1993.

As far as jobs in department stores go, women do not generally have to worry as much about being subordinate to male bosses; instead, they are expected to be subordinate to the customers, since they are considered "guests." Women are often expected to wear uniforms whereas male employees are not. Women are also held to somewhat higher appearance standards then men, resulting in more rules relating to their appearance in relation to makeup, hair length, stockings, etc. "As is the case for ‘office flowers,' women employees at department stores are sometimes primarily window dressing....Women are commonly chosen for these positions by virtue of their general good looks, beatific smiles, and elegant bows." Re-Imaging Japanese Women, 1996

In relationship to other kinds of jobs, only 13% of the doctors are women; 7% of the lawyers, and 5% of the certified public accountants. There were no women pilots for jumbo-jet planes at all until September of 1997. Dimensions of Japanese Society: Gender, Margins and Mainstream, 1999

Women in Management Positions

"...a mere 1 percent of employed women occupied administrative-managerial positions (compared to 7.4 percent in the case of males)...In the case of firms with more than one hundred workers, just 1.7 percent of company directors and managers were women...Women constitute 31 percent of the student body of four-year universities, yet only about 4 percent of university presidents and less than 10 percent of university faculty are women."Japanese Women: New Feminist Perspectives on the Past, Present, and Future, 1995, referring to a 1992 study

In a 1997 survey, women held only 82 out of 44,925 major executive positions, and most of these were held by women who were related to the founder of the company, only 29 actually being promoted to the position from the rank-and-file workers. 4 of 2,500 major companies had a female president and all four were related to the founder of the company. Dimensions of Japanese Society: Gender, Margins and Mainstream, 1999

The management position can be defined more loosely as people in team leader, section chief or department head. When done that way, still only 3.9% were held by women (in 1994). The source below breaks the figure down more, saying women formed 1.2% of the Bacho (general) managers; 2.3% of the Kacho (middle) managers, and 5.4% of the Kakaricho (front-line supervisor) managers.

The book Kimono in the Boardroom: The Invisible Evolution of Japanese Women Mangers, 1999 breaks this down much further. From 1996 come figures showing women managers by industry (The number in ( ) will be the percent of managers that are women in the U.S. at the same time).

In wholesale/retail, women form 12% (43.1%)of the managers; Manufacturing 6% (38.5%); Construction 8% (14.7%); the same for Finance/Insurance/Real Estate (48.5%) and Community personal services; 6% of the managers in transport and storage (35.4%), and as to agriculture/forestry/fishing (22%), mining (23%), and utilities (21.8%), they form a sum total of 0% of the managers.

The same source talks about women in education, where they do slightly better. As to elementary schools, 7.2% of the principals are women and 16.7% are head teachers (women form over 60% of the work force in elementary schools). In middle schools women constitute only 1.2% of the principal positions and only 4.1% of the head teachers, and only 38.4% of all workers.Japanese Women: New Feminist Perspectives on the Past, Present, and Future, 1995, referring to a 1992 study

At the high school level, where women form 2.5% of the principal positions and only 2% of the head teacher positions. In addition, they form only 21.8% of all workers, continuing a trend of fewer women the higher you go in public education.

In junior colleges women far better, being 38.7% of the total faculty and 11.7% of the college Presidents. They are only 4% of the Presidents at four-year colleges, though, and make up only 9.9% of the total positions, going along with the concept that women are shunted into junior colleges and males into four-year colleges.

There is also another form of discrimination in the public schools against women, and that relates to people who run the various clubs and activities. "There is a common tendency within schools to assign a lower evaluation to female teachers based on the assumption that their own family and household responsibilities prevent them from giving as much time and commitment to their work as men might. For this reason, male teachers are also more likely to be assigned as advisors to clubs and sports teams." (Same source as above)

Women in Politics

"The 1995 World Conference on Women also drew attention to Japanese women's representation in politics. The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), an international organization of legislators, put out a report just prior to the conference that showed Japan's ratio of women legislators to the total to be the lowest among the twenty-five advanced nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development...the IPU survey of 176 countries with parliaments ranked Japan 144th for its proportion of female legislators, a mere 2 percent. The figure is as low as those in Islamic nations and has actually regressed since 1946."The Mountain is Moving: Japanese Women's Lives, 1999

By comparison in the U.S., women hold 23% of state legislative offices nationally.

The situation for women at more local levels is actually worse, with women holding only 2.8 percent of prefectural assemblies, 5.8 percent in city assemblies and 2.0 percent in town/village assemblies. (Unmasking Japan today: The Impact of traditional Values on Modern Japanese Society, 1996)).

Manga role models

A lot of the sources I consulted on Japan were very, very, very negative towards manga, branding almost all of it as ultra-violent and/or pornographic. Yet much of manga, particularly shoujo manga, presents women in a very positive context and can serve as positive role models for young girls.

Just a few of these series include:

Alice 19th (magical, very strong love for her sister and desire to save her from evil force)

Battle Athletes (young girl wants to win contest for Cosmo Beauty, which is really not about beauty at all but is a sports contest held in outer space)

Boys Over Flowers (girl stands up against bullying in school)

Castle in the Sky (one of the Miyazaki films)

Devil Hunter Yohko (fairly obvious from the name

Fruits Basket (girl who has lost her parents still has very positive attitude and desire to help others)

Howl's Moving Castle (a Miyazaki film)

Kiki's Delivery Service (very young girl who is a witch must live on her own, get a job, etc)

Kimagure Orange Road (Madoka in particular)

Maison Ikkoku (Kyoko)

Princess Mononoke (yet another Miyazaki film)

Sailor Moon

Someday's Dreamers

Vampire Princess Miyu (granted, not necessarily a role model, but still a very strong female character).

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