Gender equality (or inequality) in an era of demographic crisis in Japan

This talk explores the complex relationship between 'gender equality' and the discourse of demographic crisis in contemporary Japan. Gender equality is currently promoted through various policies and initiatives at the state, local, and corporate levels. This talk examines several government and company initiatives, including paternity leave policies and women's empowerment programmes. This presentation argues that conceptions of gender equality in Japanese society are paradoxically grounded in notions of gender essentialism. In particular, gender essentialism is inherent in the idea that 'women's views' are key to advancing diversity, innovation and productivity for Japanese economic growth. Drawing on an analysis of policy narratives and interviews with companies that promote gender equality initiatives, this talk aims to shed light on how various actors' motivations, intentional or not, converge, adopt or challenge the dominant narratives surrounding understandings of gender in Japan in the context of a perceived demographic crisis. 

Chigusa Yamaura is a sociocultural anthropologist and an Associate Professor in Global and Area Studies at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford. She is the Course Director of the MPhil in Global and Area Studies (GAS) programme. Dr Yamaura is the author of Marriage and Marriageability: The Practices of Matchmaking between Men from Japan and Women from Northeast China (Cornell University Press, 2020). Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Japan and China, articles based on this project have also been published in Anthropological Quarterly and the Journal of Asian Studies. Her current project examines demographic crisis narratives in contemporary Japan and how such narratives manifest in various aspects of people’s lives, including women’s reproductive health, childcare provision, and paternity leave policies. The project's outcomes have been published in Critical Asian Studies and Japanese Studies. She is currently completing a book manuscript on this topic. Her work addresses a broad array of themes, including gender, marriage, cross-border marriage, family, life course expectations, motherhood, reproduction, childcare, and fertility, as well as migration, colonial memory, nationalism, and transnationalism in East Asia.