Women and Representation in Japan

Abstract

Japan's high level of socio-economic advancement notwithstanding, the level of women's representation in Japan lags behind that in not only other advanced countries but also many developing countries. This article aims to elucidate the causes of the under-representation of women in Japan. Preceding studies suggest that multiple, intertwining factors have had a collective influence on the number of women representatives. Based on these studies, I highlight four factors which affect women's representation: the electoral system; socio-political culture; electoral quotas; and the activities and attitudes of women concerning their own representation. I discuss how these factors have influenced the under-representation of Japanese women, in effect demonstrating that all the above factors have had negative impacts. Among these, the most serious obstacle is women's lack of enthusiasm for a larger political presence, which is sustained by Japanese political culture and social customs. I argue that strong women's voices calling for more women representatives are the necessary basis for measures to improve the under-representation of women.

Keywords:

• electoral system
• gender quotas
• Japanese women
• socio-political culture
• under- representation

Acknowledgements

This study was sponsored by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (FY2007-8) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. I am also grateful to Atsushi Sugita and three anonymous readers of this article for their useful comments.

Notes

In the Upper House elections, half of the fixed 242 seats are elected every three years. They have participated in local elections since 1947, but the data start from 1975.

See the Inter-Parliamentary Union website, http://www.ipu.org/.

See, for example, Rule and Zimmerman (1992); Lovenduski and Norris (1993); Darcy et al. (1994); O'Regan (2000); Caul (2001); Inglehart and Norris (2003); Norris (2004); Opello (2004, 2006); Dahlerup and Freidenvall (2005); Dahlerup (2006); Kittilson (2006); Sawer et al. (2006); Paxton and Hughes (2007); Sanbonmatsu (2006); Tremblay (2008).

In the Upper House election of July 2007, for example, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) nominated seven women as primary or secondary candidates in its twenty-one multi-member district, while it endorsed six female candidates in its twenty-nine single-member districts.

A municipality must have a population of more than 50,000 to be called a city, and those cities whose populations exceed 500,000 and which possess higher levels of administrative competence are called designated cities. The twenty-three Special Wards in Tokyo are authorized to exercise almost the same administrative competence as other municipalities.

Local assembly election data are based on the three local elections of 1999, 2003 and 2007 (Ichikawa-fusae-kinenkai 2008). National election data (as supplied by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications) are the average of the two houses' recent elections: the Lower House in 2000, 2003 and 2005; and the Upper House in 2001, 2004 and 2007.

This survey was conducted by the Twenty-First Century Centre of Excellence Program of Tohoku University between 18 September and 20 October 2005, by interviews with 3,000 Japanese voters. See Kawato (2007).

The survey is periodically conducted by the Gender Equality Bureau, Cabinet Office (http://www.gender.go.jp/).

The DPJ was successful in the August 2009 election, defeating the LDP and forming the Japanese government.

Personal interview with Mariko Mitsui on 28 June 2005.

The respondents of this survey numbered 3,502– of them, 1,616 are men and 1,886 are women (see http://winet.nwec.jp/toukei/save/xls/L120540.xls).

Backlash politicians include some female LDP parliamentarians.