Realize the Goals for Gender Equality, Development and Peace, Now!
Beijing + 10: For Advancement and Human Rights of Japanese Women and Peace
Over the past ten years, pressed by the growing women's movement and public
opinion calling for gender equality, progress has been made in Japan regarding
legislation, and in establishment and strengthening of institutional mechanisms
for the advancement of women. However, while the country is counted among
the advanced nations, the status of Japanese women lags far behind in many
aspects. With the Gender Empowerment Measures (GEM), Japan was ranked at
44th among 70 nations in 2003, dropping from its previous standing, 31st
among 64 nations in 2001. The percentage of female diet members has kept
decreasing. In the House of Councilors election held in July 2004, 15 female
candidates were elected, down by three from the previous level, and the
percentage of female legislators in the Senate dropped from 14.6% to 12.4%.
Even the number of women candidates remained less than the half of that
of the previous election. The existing electoral system which includes
the single-seat constituency system is obviously a major obstacle to women's
political advancement.
Coupled with the moves
to revise Japan's Peace Constitution, backlash against the efforts to
promote gender equality are being intensified, particularly in school education
including sex education based on gender perspectives, and in the process
of formulating ordinances at municipalities. The backlash forces are backed
up by some media, and parliament and local government members. In a prefecture,
the governor even appointed a as educational board member person who glorifies
the Japan's war of aggression and takes a hostile view of the Convention
on the Rights of the Child. The Japanese government should take a resolute
stand against such backlash.
Regarding the issue of the Japanese military sex slavery during World War II, the Women's International War Crime Tribunal held in Tokyo in 2000 found Emperor Hirohito, the Japanese government and high ranking military officers responsible for organizing sex slavery, known as "comfort women" system, thus guilty of crimes against humanity. The case of distortion of the TV program on the Tribunal aired in January 2001 by the public broadcaster NHK has been fought over in court. In the NHK program, the crucial segments of the Tribunal, including the conviction of the Emperor as well as testimonies of survivors and Japanese veterans were either dropped or replaced with unrelated ones. Early this year, the chief producer in charge of that program revealed that the program had to undergo a major alteration due to political pressure from the government and the ruling party. Political interference in the media amounts to "censorship," and is a violation of freedom of expression and press guaranteed by the Constitution. Those who put pressures on NHK were leading junior lawmakers of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, known as strong advocates for Constitutional revision. What underlies this problem is the fact that despite the recommendations issued by the United Nations, the Japanese government has failed to seriously reflect on the war of aggression, and to make official apology and compensation to the women who were forced into sex slavery.
60 Years of the Atomic Bombing - Defend the Peace Constitution and "Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Now!"
For Japanese women, this year is of special importance as it marks the
60th year from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Japan's war of aggression during the WWII took the lives of 3.1 million
Japanese and 20 million Asian people. Reflecting on such an enormous cost of the war of aggression, Japan established the Constitution with Article 9 that declares Japan will forever renounce war and will not maintain war potential. With this Constitution, Japanese women for the first time gained equal rights with men and the right to vote guaranteed by the law. The peace principles of the Constitution have been the foundation for Japan's reconstruction in the post-war years and for what the nation is now.
Today, Article 9 is in danger. There have been attempts to repeal it under the pretext that the Constitution has become out-of-date and does not meet the needs of the time, or it was imposed on Japan by the U.S. What is critical now is the move to revise Article 9 and to have the definition of the Self-Defense Forces and the right to collective defense stipulated in the Constitution so that Japan can fully cooperate as an ally in wars waged by the U.S. The U.S. Bush Administration also strongly demands it. Not only the ruling LDP and Komei Party, but also the biggest opposition Democratic Party of Japan is advocating the constitutional revision.
The Charter of the United Nations prohibits the use of force and calls for peaceful settlement of conflicts. By renouncing war, Article 9 goes even ahead of this principle. As the U.N. Millennium Form stated in its report that each country should have a war-renouncing article in their Constitution like Japan's Article 9, Japanese women treasures Article 9 as something we can take pride to the rest of the world.
To defend our Peace Constitution, nine prominent figures such as Nobel Prize writer Oe Kenzaburo, critic Kato Shuichi, and writer Inoue Hisashi as well as Sawachi Hisae, formed the "Article 9 Association." They called for all kinds of individual effort to preserve Article 9. In support of their appeal, the New Japan Women's Association is developing a grassroots movement. It encourages members to organize in communities and work places study meetings using NJWA's "Handbook of the Constitution," and a reprinted edition of the "Story of the New Constitution," which was originally published by the Ministry of Education immediately after the establishment of Constitution to be used in class to drive home the principles of the Constitution to every child. NJWA members are also holding gatherings where young parents and children can learn about the war and the atomic bombing by listening to personal stories of survivors. They are active in signature collecting and making goods carrying the message to defend the Constitution.
To defend the lives of women and children from a nuclear war and to oppose the adverse constitutional revision and the revival of militarism are NJWA's main objectives. To promote the international signature campaign in support of the call "Abolition of Nuclear Weapons, Now!" as well as the signature drive for the appeal "No to the Adverse Constitutional Revision, Defend Article," NJWA is now encouraging its members to enlist as "peace challenger." The concept is to have as many members as possible involved in the two major campaigns: nuclear abolition and defense of the Constitution. Peace challengers will work to collect five signatures in support of the two appeals respectively, and to increase one subscriber to Shinfujin Shimbun, NJWA's weekly paper, as a useful resource for people to understand the situation and to get involved in the movement as defenders of peace. 500,000 signatures have been collected so far in support of "Abolition Now" appeal, and 300,000 for "Defend Constitution" appeal. Some 100 members are expected to go to New York in May for the NPT Review Conference with all the signatures collected.
Financial Circle's Strategy and Reality of Women
In Japan, under the neo-liberal "structural reform" pushed ahead by the Koizumi Cabinet in alliance with the business circles, full-time jobs are being rapidly replaced with unstable contingent employment. At the same time, the government is forcing drastic cuts in social services and other measures to impose further burden on the people. In this regard, the situation facing women goes counter to the direction set out in the recommendations issued by the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in 2003 on the redress of discrimination against women in employment, and on the promotion of measures to support the balancing of work and family life.
Multinationals are said to have entered "business recovery," as indicated in the report of Toyota achieving current profits of one trillion yen two years in a low. However, the massive corporate restructuring has rapidly deteriorated working conditions for both men and women: salaries have decreased for the fourth straight year, bonus has been cut to the level of twenty years ago, and household income has dropped by 12 trillion yen in these five years, while corporate earnings have increased by 15 trillion yen. In 2003, the Worker Dispatch Law was adversely revised (entered into force in 2004), to ease the restriction of the use of temporary workers, widening the categories of jobs as far as to manufacturing jobs. This has helped to further increase unstable employment. We see a sharp rise of non full-time employment including part-time and dispatch labor among women. The number of women non-full time workers totals 10.61 million, exceeding that of full-timers of 10.34 million. Female part-timers only receive 44.5 percent of the wage paid to their male counterparts. According the survey conducted by NJWA, many part-timers are forced to work at low wages, even below legal minimum wage, and 40 percent of the dispatch workers earn less than 150,000 yen a month. The increase of unstable employment among women has widened the gap between men and women, posing an obstacle to the promotion of gender equality and women's empowerment.
The declining birthrate is a major issue for Japan today. The country's birthrate has kept falling to the record low level of 1.29. Underlying this is the difficulties facing women in having children, such as harsh working conditions and long and intensive labor that hinder both men and women workers from balancing their job and household responsibilities, insufficient measures to support child-rearing including the lack of day care facilities, and the heavy burden of school expenses. More and more women give up having children against their will. Given the fact that workers of families with small children actually work longest (2016 hours per year), with one out of every four male workers in their forties work more than 60 hours a week, the problem of long working hours must be redressed. Moreover, illegal dismissals of women for pregnancy, childbirth and for taking maternity leave are still going on.
Contrary to reason, the government is preparing a bill to abandon its international commitment to reduce work hours to 1,800 a year, although this has been set out as one of the priorities in measures to address the declining birthrate. Background to this is the impudent demands from the business circles for deregulation. NJWA severely criticizes the government policy on employment and labor exclusively devoted to the financial circles is incompatible with the measures for promoting gender equality and the balancing of work and home, and demands such a policy should be changed. The Law for Measures to Support the Development of the Next Generation enacted in March, 2003 as part of the government policy to facilitate workers to reconcile job and family responsibilities, as well as to reverse the declining birthrate, makes it compulsory for local authorities and business owners to make 10-year action plans starting from April 2005. However, with no budgetary steps to be taken by the state to back up, there is no assurance that the plans will be carried out.
For the past year, the struggle of women and workers have made progress. Women workers at Nomura Securities won an out-of-court settlement in their lawsuit on indirect discrimination. 23.9 billion yen has been reimbursed to workers in back pay for unpaid overtime work. The Childcare Leave Law was revised so as to widen the scope of the law to fixed-term workers. NJWA is carrying out this spring a campaign to look into gender-biased practices and stereotyped roles of men and women at home, school, in communities and workplaces. It urges that the Equal Employment Opportunity Law should be revised to provide effective measures, and calls for equal treatment between full-time and non-full time workers.
Next year will mark the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Based on the experience of having collected 10 million signatures for the Appeal from Hiroshima and Nagasaki that called for the abolition of nuclear weapons, the New Japan Women's Association (Shinfujin) members are actively carrying out nationwide the "Abolish Nuclear Weapons Now!" signature campaign, launched by the 2003 World Conference against A & H Bombs. Apart from their families and friends, Shinfujin members are gaining support for the petition from broader sections of people, visiting schools, women's groups, and elderly people's associations in their communities.
