ジェンダー研究Special Section

第 21 号2018 年

Gender and Political Leadership

Introduction for the Special Section
Ki-young Shin
Ochanomizu University

The theme of the special section of thisissue is “Gender and Political Leadership.”Given the improvement of women’s politicalrepresentation and recent global upsurge inwomen’s political activism, this theme
cannot be timelier. The global average ofwomen’s legislative representation in lower
houses has reached 23.8% (as of May 1 2018,
Inter-Parliament Union) and womenassumed the heads of governments/states in
17 countries as of January 1, 2017. EastAsian countries and the US—on which thisspecial section focuses extensively—havealso made important progress. For instance,in 2016, Hilary Rodham Clinton became thefirst American woman to be nominated as apresidential candidate by a major politicalparty. Although she lost the election, it isworth noting that she did win the popularvote.
In Northeastern Asian countries, South
Korea and Taiwan elected women as heads ofstates in 2012 and 2016 respectively. Notably,
South Korea’s Park Geun-hye and Taiwan’s
Tsai Ing-wen received majority of the votes,
having contested against competitive malecandidates. Moreover, in the 2000s, the twocountries introduced gender quota laws toenhance women’s national legislativerepresentation.
Japan, however, has not made muchprogress in terms of women’s politicalrepresentation. In fact, only recently has thelack of adequate legislative representation for
women drawn the attention of the Japanesepublic. Women’s organizations lobbied tosensitize the Japanese legislators and public
about this issue, pushing for a gender quota
legislation. After six years of lobbying, theLaw to Promote Gender Equality in Politics
was passed on May 16, 2018. This is amonumental achievement, especially since
Japanese women were traditionally regarded
as apolitical or politically disinterested
citizens and the Abe government’s policy topromote the active participation of women insociety did not include affirmative action forimproving women’s political representation.
This law can be regarded only as anunintended outcome of the current
government’spolicies
onwomen’sparticipation in society.
However, these developments in politicalrepresentation of women have not led to thesafeguarding of women’s rights hand in hand.
The relations between deeply entrenched5Introduction for the Special Section

gender inequality and political representationof women in politics have long been
unnoticed. It is the #MeToo movement that
aimed to protest systemic gender
discrimination and sexual violence thatencouraged women across the globe tobecome active political agents. For example,
an unprecedented number of women have
stepped forward to run for office in the 2018
US election. Also, a majority of voters cameto take sexual harassment more seriously.
In South Korea, young women had
initiated a movement against gender-based
discrimination and violence even before theinitiation of the #MeToo movement in the US.
They actively participated in public protests,
demanding the impeachment of president
Park in late 2016. The global reach of the#MeToo movement further empowered
South Korean women to publicly share theirexperiences of harassment. Japanese womenfollowed suit, and female journalists andwomen public officials made public thedetails of their harassment in the hands ofpowerful men, leading to the resignation ofthe harassers. These events caused significant
public outrage.
Notably, these developments reinforced
the patently feminist notion that the personalis political; they threw light on how gendered
power cut across public and private spheres,
effectively denouncing women’s dignity andexploiting their sexuality. These details attest
that the political sphere, and, by extension,
the notion of political leadership, are basedon masculine norms and male dominance.
The special section features articles thatexamine such gendered nature of political6

leadership and policy-making. Two articles
focus on the gendered aspects of the 2016 US
presidential campaign and election. Anotherarticle analyzes the 2012 presidential election
in South Korea. The section also features anarticle about the Abe government’s policies
to promote women’s participation in thesocial and economic spheres.
Deckman’s article entitled “Too Soft andFeminine: Masculinity and the Gender Gap
in the 2016 US Presidential Election”
examines how attitudes about masculinity
influenced voters’ choice, especially female
voters’ choice, during the 2016 US
presidential election. Deckman shows thatwomen voters constitute a diverse group andthat their voting choices vary widely,
typically influenced by factors such as
partisanship, race, education, and their own
perceptions of masculinity. Her statisticalanalysis proves that women who believedthat society has become too soft and feminine
were three times more likely to have voted
for Donald Trump than women who did not
hold such views. Even Trump’s overtly sexist
campaign did not discourage a strong cohortof conservative white women to cast theirballots for him. Citing this finding, Deckman
concludes that even the highly influential#MeToo movement may not change thevoting preferences of conservative white
women who voted for Trump in the future
elections.
Drawing on Kathleen Hall Jamieson’s
concept of the double bind, Dolan’s article
entitled “A Woman at the Top of the Ticket:
The Role of Gender in the 2016 Presidential
Election” analyzes the gender dynamics ofジェンダー研究the election. Notably, the double bindconcept refers to the fact that female
candidates are typically required to walk atightrope of gendered expectations bydemonstrating sufficient masculinity andfemininity on the campaign trail. Dolanargues that Trump used gender stereotypes asa weapon against Clinton: he critiqued her for
being
insufficiently
masculine
andinsufficiently feminine, while, at the sametime, exaggerating his own masculinity. The
results of the election suggest that female
candidates struggle to be considered on an
equal footing with male candidates whencontesting the most masculine office in theland: the US Presidency.
While these articles examine the factors
associated with the electoral defeat ofAmerica’s first female presidential candidate,
Shin analyzes the factors associated with theelection of South Korea’s first femalepresident. Entitled “Gender, Election
Campaigns and the First Female President ofSouth Korea,” the article analyzes thegendered aspects of the political strategies
employed by Park and her male opponent,
Moon Jae-in, in their respective politicalcampaigns. Shin argues that both Park andMoon mobilized widely accepted gendernorms as core campaign strategies to expand
their support bases beyond their partisan
constituencies. At the same time, thecandidates competed to prove their bettersuitability for the highly masculinizednational leadership position. By capitalizing
on her historically significant prospect ofbecoming South Korea’s first femalepresident, Park was able to present a positive

第 21 号2018 年

picture of women’s political leadership. On
the other hand, by emphasizing her as a filial
daughter of a former national leader, she wasable to present herself as a competent, likable,
and sympathetic candidate.
Takeda’s article entitled “Between
Reproduction and Production: Womenomics
and the Japanese Government’s Approach to
Women and Gender Policies” examines theAbe government’s policies for promoting
women’s participation in the social andeconomic spheres. Since 2014, the Abegovernment’s policies have been based on“womenomics,” the idea that a nation’s
economic growth can be stimulated byincreasing women’s participation in the labor
force. Drawing from what Ian Holliday calls
the “productivist paradigm,” Takeda argues
that the Abe government’s policy-making isvery similar to the ways in which previous
governments charted and implemented socialand economic policies. The article concludes
by suggesting that the productivist paradigm
that characterizes the Abe government’s
policies concerning women’s labor force
participation might have a negative impact ongender equality at the workplace, largely due
to the economic concerns of the Japanesestate and the country’s industries.
The special section also includes aninterview with Mari Miura, a politicalscience professor at Sophia University inTokyo, who played a key role in the passageof the Law to Promote Gender Equality in
Politics in Japan. The interview focuses on
the significance and the possible impact of
this law on Japanese politics and women’s
political representation. Miura calls the law7Introduction for the Special Section“the Gender Parity Law” with expectations
that the law could trigger positivetransformation in Japanese politics.
The articles in the special section emerged
from the collaborative research activities
undertaken by the Japanese and American
Women Political Scientists Symposium(JAWS). The JAWS was established in 2000
by Karen O’Conner and Tokuko Ogai, withthe help of several other scholars from Japanand the US, to promote scholarly exchange

8

between the two countries. In March 2017,
members of the JAWS organized aninternational symposium titled “How Far
Have We Come in Women’s PoliticalLeadership?” at Ochanomizu University.
This special section is organized based on therich scholarly exchange at this symposium
My sincere and deep gratitude goes to the allcontributors to the JAWS-Ochanomizu
symposium.