ジェンダー研究

Special Section

第 21 号2018 年

Gender and Political Leadership

Between Reproduction and Production: Womenomics and theJapanese Government’s Approach to Women and Gender
Policies1
Hiroko Takeda
Nagoya University
This article examines in detail the Abe Shinzo government’s policy initiative
to promote women’s active social and economic participation. The initiative has
been developed incrementally since 2014, being informed by the notion of“womenomics.” Womenomics is an idea compiled by investment bankstrategists, which essentially locates the expansion of women’s labor
participation as a means to stimulate national economic growth. In this sense,
the Abe government’s policy-making exhibits continuity with that of previous
governments, including the DPJ governments, sharing what Ian Holliday calls
the “productivist paradigm,” a characteristic of social policy in East Asia.
Although the Abe government’s policy-making has evolved in response to thecritical feedback offered by the opposition parties and academic experts, the factthat the productivist paradigm still remains firmly in the Abe government’s
policy-making concerning women’s labor raises some questions over its
efficacy, as the government reform of labor regulations (in particular, theintroduction of the principle of equal pay for equal work and the reduction ofworking hours)― the crucial reform agendas to achieve the policy goal ofpromoting women at the workplace―may be compromised due to economic
concerns at the side of the state and industry.
Keywords
womenomics, women and gender policy, Japanese politics, gender equality, productivist
paradigm

Introduction
Japan as a country has long been known
for its high degree of gender inequality in theareas of political and economic participation.
Then, the year 2014 saw a sudden flood of

1 This is a revised version of Takeda (2015; 2016a; 2016b). The author is grateful for a series ofcomments and questions given to the earlier papers, and for the anonymous reviewer for insightful
suggestions.

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Between Reproduction and Production: Womenomics and the Japanese Government’s Approach to Women and
Gender Policies

governmental discourses advocating thepromotion of women’s labor. Since then, thecurrent Abe Shinzo government hasrepeatedly confirmed that the promotion of
women’s economic participation is one of theirmost important national policy agendas and thecore of the government’s growth strategy,
commonly known as “Abenomics.” Concretely,in 2014, the government proposed to takeaction in the following three policy areas: toincrease women’s labor force participation
rates (for ages 25-44) from 68 per cent in 2012
to 73 per cent in 2020; to increase the numberof nursery places by 400,000 by 2017; and to
introduce a series of initiatives to promote the“utilization” (katsuyō) of the female workforce
including a policy goal to increase theproportion of women occupying leadership
positions to 30 per cent (Prime Minister ofJapan and His Cabinet 2014).
The Abe government’s commitment to thepromotion of the female workforce can also
be read in the Basic Policy for Economic andFiscal Management and Reform (the socalled “Robust Plan,” Honebuto no Hōshin),
the key policy document authorized by the
Cabinet that sets a framework for policymaking and budgeting for the following year.
The 2014 Robust Plan located the promotionof the female workforce as the first item in asection entitled “Key Issues to Facilitate
Economic Revitalization and Mid- and LongTerm Development” (Cabinet Office 2014).
Following the release of the 2014 RobustPlan, the Abe government announced a plan
to introduce a new piece of legislation toeffectively facilitate the process of promoting
the female labor force, while pledging to50

increase family-related national spending. In
October 2014, “A Policy Package to Make
Every Woman Shine” (Subete no Josei ga
Kagayaku Pakkēji) was approved by the
Cabinet, and two bills concerning thepromotion of the female labor force were
submitted to the Diet for deliberation. After
having shelved due to the 2014 snap General
Election, the bills were resubmitted withoutmajor revisions in the 2015 Diet Session and
the Bill to Promote Women’s Working Life
(Josei Katsuyaku Suishin Hō) was passed inAugust 2015. In Autumn 2015, the Abegovernment policy initiative of “making
women shine” was upgraded into a policy
program of “Dynamic Engagement of All
Citizens” (Ichioku Sō Katsuyaku), within
which the expansion of women’s economic
participation is still located as the central
policy goal.
Such policy-making moves certainly beg
the question of whether or not the second Abegovernment is seriously pursuing a politicalgoal of improving women’s socio-economic
position in Japan, and if so, what changed
Abe’s political stance from that of his firstterm as Prime Minister. The first Abe
government of 2006-2007, in which Takaichi
Sanae, a close party ally of Abe and aconviction
conservative/anti-Feminist,
served as the Minister in charge of fertility
decline and gender equality, approachedfamily policy reform in a “traditionalist”
manner by underlining the importance of
maintaining the conventional family model.
Such a policy line was also declared in Abe’s
pre-premiership publication Towards a
Beautiful Country (Utsukushii Kuni e) (S.

ジェンダー研究

Abe 2006: 214-221). In his book, Abe’s
policy priority is clearly placed on theedification of young Japanese regarding the“beauty” of a “typical” family througheducation, and this echoes a longstanding
conservative view in Japan that dismisses
gender equality as a destructive force against
a “beautiful” Japanese tradition and culture.
So, do recent policy moves by the Abegovernment
signifyhisradicaltransformation, and does the Japanese
government now take the agenda of genderequality seriously?
Among extant studies of the Abegovernment’s women’s policy, a sociologist,
Minagawa Masumi indeed suggests a shift in
Abe’s approach towards a more social
democratic and feminist line (Minagawa
2014). Others have pointed out a series offactors operating behind the ostensible policy
moves, namely the needs 1) to sustain andfurther stimulate economic growth; 2) tomaintain popularity in the face ofcontroversial constitutional reforms; and 3)
to claim that Japan is a first-rate country byinternational standards (Takenobu 2014;
Tsuji 2015a; 2015b; Horie 2016a; 2016b;
2017; Coleman forthcoming; Ogasawara
forthcoming). In other words, thesearguments posit the recent shift in the Abegovernment’s women’s policies as a political
tool to achieve the government’s genuine
political goals, but not for the promotion ofgender equality itself.
This article certainly shares theunderstanding of these extant studies that the
primary purpose of the Abe government’s
recent policy initiatives is not gender equality

第 21 号2018 年

or women’s empowerment, but rather thestrengthening of state power through the
expansion of the national economy. In
addition, the article argues that in order tograsp the full picture of current policy
developments, the Abe government’s policy
initiatives need to be clearly located in the
trajectory of family and gender policy
reforms since the 1990s. As will be discussed
below with reference to the “productivist
paradigm,” the second Abe government’s
policies often exhibit continuity, rather thanchange, with those of the previous
governments, in particular, in the sense thatfamily and gender policies are positioned asa means to maintain and stimulate national
economic growth. This, however, raises
some questions over the efficacy of current
policy initiatives, since the economic
concerns at the state side appear to limit thescope of employment system reform, which
is necessary to promote the female labor
force in the labor market.
The rest of this article is organized in thefollowing manner; the section immediately
following this introduction examines thenotion of “womenomics,” the principle idea
behind the women and gender policy reformof the Abe government. Then, the third
section locates the Abe government’s womenand gender policy reform in the trajectory of
the political reform process since the 1990s.
On completion of these steps, the fourth
section discusses the Abe government’s
policy-making endeavors and identifies theirlimitations. The concluding section briefly
summarizes the main points and explores
some implications for the future51

Between Reproduction and Production: Womenomics and the Japanese Government’s Approach to Women and
Gender Policies

developments.

“Womenomics”
A 2014 Gender Equality Bureau documentthat explains why and how the promotion of
the female workforce contributes to therevitalization of the Japanese economy andsociety posits the following three expected
merits:1. The activation of female workers will
enable the expansion of the labor force inthe face of aging and fertility decline.
2. It is necessary to secure top-class humanresources, regardless of gender, to becompetitive in the global market. In
pursuit of this aim, it is useful to activate
the underutilized female labor force.
3. Women are the leading demand creatorsin the area of everyday consumption. Yet,at the supply side, there are very few
women making decisions. The promotionof the female workforce should address
this situation and, in so doing, create a
consumer-centered market.
(Cabinet Office Gender Equality Bureau 2014a).
These points intimately resonate with theidea of “womenomics,” which urges us topay due attention to women’s economic
contribution as a vital engine to achieve
economic growth. The term has been
popularized through a series of strategy
reports published by the Goldman Sachs
Group. The first report, Womenomics: Buy

the Female Economy, was released in 1999.
An updated analysis in 2005, Womenomics:
Japan’s Hidden Asset, attracted some media
attention 2 , and in more recent years, twomore versions, Womenomics 3.0: The Time is
Now and Womenomics 4.0: Time to Walk theTalk, became available in the public domain,in 2010 and 2014, respectively. Kathy Matsui,a senior strategist with Goldman Sachs inTokyo (at that time), was listed as the leading
author of all the womenomics reports.
The thrust of the womenomics argument is
to stress the necessity for the Japanese state,business and society to revitalize the female
workforce to address demographic and fiscal
challenges and, in so doing, sustain economic
growth. In the authors’ words:
We first wrote about “womenomics” backin 1999, and our conclusion has not changed.
That is, out of economic necessity or as aresult of lifestyle choices, an increasing
proportion of Japanese women are actively
participating in the workforce and becominga very important source of income andconsumption growth. While much moreprogress still needs to be made at both the
public and private sector levels to foster
greater female labor participation, we
believe Japan is finally moving in the right
direction.
(Matsui et al. 2005: 1)
Concretely, “womenomics” works in thefollowing way; Japan’s acute demographic
crisis incurred by rapid fertility decline and

2 For example, “A Guide to Womenomics: The Future of the World Lies Increasingly in Female
Hands”, The Economist, April 12, 2006.

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ジェンダー研究aging, which is described as a “tsunami” inthe 2010 report (Matsui et al. 2010: 4), will
generate a severe labor shortage, while
contracting the size of demand. This will leadto the national economy being trapped in a
deflationary cycle, when the amount of social
security spending is expanding, exacerbating
the already-sizable national debt. These
economic and political challenges, theauthors argue, cannot be managed throughimplementing conventional fiscal andmonetary policy, but only by boosting theunderutilized female labor force.
The reasons as to why Japan’s national
economy would benefit from having a more
active female workforce is threefold. First,
the expected labor shortage would be filled
by a sizable, unused, well-educated labor
force. Second, women, who tend to be thekey decision-makers about household
consumption and investment, would have alarger disposable income. Third, increased
female participation in the labor market
would create more demand in someindustries, in particular, in the service sector,
further stimulating the drive for economic
growth. The 2014 womenomics report
estimates that “the absolute level of Japan’s
GDP could be lifted by as much as 12.5%,” if
the level of women’s labor participation in2013 in Japan (62.5 per cent) were to matchthat of men’s (80.6 per cent) (Matsui et al.
2014: 5). In addition, the 2010 report names“womenomics winners” (i.e., areas ofindustry in which “there is likely to be secular
growth going forward,” for example, daycare,nursing care, restaurants/prepared food,internet, beauty products, apparel, real estate,

第 21 号2018 年

financial, travel/leisure and temporary
staffing agencies) (Matsui et al. 2010: 31).
In sum, womenomics reports make a“business case” for promoting women’s labor
participation in Japan in the form of theinvestment bank strategist’s language. In
order to provide customers with theinformation necessary to make soundinvestment decisions, the womenomics
reports identify the underutilization of thefemale labor force as the structural obstaclethat impedes the Japanese economy fromsustaining and stimulating economic growthand make a determined call for change.
Indeed, the 2014 report contains a long list ofrecommendations, not only for the Japanese
government and private sector, but also for“society,” by pointing out that to achieve ahigher level of women’s labor participation,
the “mindset” needs to be altered by“dispelling myths,” and “encouraging greater
gender equality at home” (Matsui et al. 2014:17-29). Nevertheless, a fact that the notion of
womenomics regards foreign domestic
helpers, again often women, as a vital
resource that will enable Japanese women to
be mobilized for employment (Matsui et al.
2005: 11) indicates that the idea of “genderequality” discussed in the reports appears
limited, being subjugated to the primary goalof economic growth in Japan. Sucheconomically-driven recommendations seemto have caught “the ear of Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe” (Nohara 2014) and have been
incorporated into the Japanese government’s
economic strategic plan, i.e., Abenomics. A
US Congressional Research Service reporton womenomics in Japan, for example,

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Between Reproduction and Production: Womenomics and the Japanese Government’s Approach to Women and
Gender Policies

identifies womenomics as the ideationalsource of Abe’s growth strategy:
Many observers and analysts have called
for reforms to close the gender gap as a way
to revitalize the economy after years of slow
growth. This economic argument perhaps
was first advanced in 1999 by Kathy Matsui,a strategist with Goldman Sachs in Japan
who coined the term “womenomics.”(Chanlett-Avery and Nelson 2014: 2-3)

The Productivist Paradigm andFamily and Gender Policy Reforms
since the 1990s
The reviewing of the trajectory of family
policy reforms as well as gender equality
politics in Japan since the 1990s, however,urges us to acknowledge that what the US
CRS report calls the “economic argument”
has an older root than the womenomics
reports. When the legislation of the Basic
Law for Gender Equal Society was inprogress in the mid 1990s, policy-making
elites who led the legislation process
frequently pointed out the economic merits ofpromoting gender equality. 3 That is to say,the promotion of gender equality was posited
as a useful economic device to, first, tackle
the economic setback in the post-bubbleeconomy period; second, alleviate pressuresof economic globalization; and third, copewith rapid demographic and lifestyle changes,
thereby rationalizing and upgrading theJapanese economy, by helping it to return to
the growth path. For example, Hashimoto

Ryūtaro, Prime Minister in 1996–1997,
addressed the members of the Gender
Equality Advisory Council, as follows:
The realization of a gender equal society isa demand of our time and a big key todetermining the future of our country. It isvital to attempt to create an abundant andenergetic society by dealing with the issue of
fertility decline, aging and rapid changes inthe economic and social environment
exemplified by maturing economic activities
and internationalization.
(quoted in Ōsawa 2002: 54-55)
As pointed out in an interview given byŌsawa Mari, a professor of social policy at
the University of Tokyo and one of the main
players in the legislation process, the logicalconstruction to emphasize the economic
merits of promoting gender equality was
useful to elicit consent to the legislation of the
Basic Law from business leaders who were
often concerned with the “cost of equality”(i.e., a series of costs that are likely to be
incurred from extra human resource
expenditure and more rigorous labor
regulations) (Ōsawa and Ueno 2001: 64-71).
By projecting economic benefits rather thanthe costs, discourses to promote genderequality politics in the 1990s advanced an
idea that a stagnating and struggling Japanese
economy would be revitalized by achieving amore gender-equal society, and in this way,
the agenda of gender equality wasincorporated into the national political

3 For more detailed discussions with reference to policy documents, see Takeda (2005: 175-184;
2008b: 201-205).

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process,asdemonstratedby
the
promulgation of the Basic Law for Gender
Equal Society in 1999 and the revision of theEqual Employment Opportunity Law in 1997.
These legislative efforts certainly need to bemarked as the institutional achievements ofgender equality politics in the 1990s, inparticular, given that the Basic Law includes
scope
for
gender-mainstreaming.
Simultaneously, it is worth noting thatthrough the emphasis placed on its economic
merits, gender equality politics in the 1990s
intersected with neoliberal concerns to
optimize the national economic structure by
rearranging the employment system, while
the ideational edge that the term ‘equality’
could potentially pose was in effectcompromised by excluding the very termfrom the legislation process. Although thepolitical endeavors in the 1990s to promote
gender equality are conventionally describedas “gender equality politics” in English, theliteral meaning of the original Japanese termis the “co-participation of men and women”(danjo kyōdō sankaku), which does notnecessarily question the actual state andquality of “co-participation,” and the policy
discussion was generally framed with

第 21 号2018 年

reference to women and men’s active
participation in the economy and society, but
not gender equality, justice, and fairness.4
The ideational ambiguity stemmed fromthe economic emphasis of gender equality
politics in the 1990s was exploited to further
advance neoliberal reforms in the early 2000s.
Structural reform policies implemented by
the Koizumi Jun’ichiro government 5
engaged in family policy reform andadvocated the “virtue” and merits of being adouble-income family. Yet, the focus ofpolicy-making and implementation was
directed towards labor deregulation and thedevelopment of life-related industries, suchas childcare, elderly care, and domestic work
support services (Takeda 2008a; 2011). That
is to say, the policy development under the
Koizumi government can be understood inline with womenomics: the active economic
participation of women contributes tosustaining and, more importantly, expanding
national economic growth, while filling theshortage in the labor force (and hence, insocial security contributors) in a time of
population decline. Furthermore, it isimportant to acknowledge that the shift to the
double-income family model was an integral

4 Ōsawa Mari has confirmed in the interview cited above that the wording of the Basic Law for a
Gender Equal Society is designed to include the scope for monitoring and sanctioning indirect
gender discrimination. In other words, the legislation was intended to make some provisions tocover a broader issue area than mere “co-participation” (Ōsawa and Ueno 2002: 30-33). On thispoint, it is worth noting that gender equality politics in Japan was countered by fierce backlash
movements in the 2000s in which feminist scholars, policy-makers and activists were so severely
attacked as to receive death threats, and local statutes directly going against the Basic Law were
established by a series of subregional assemblies.
5 It was the Hashimoto government that embarked on ‘structural reform’ in Japan. Gender equality
politics in the 1990s developed within the framework of structural reform of the national social
security system (Takeda 2005: 201-205).

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Between Reproduction and Production: Womenomics and the Japanese Government’s Approach to Women and
Gender Policies

part of labor deregulation advanced by the
Koizumi government, whose main objective
was to increase employment flexibility,
thereby destabilising the male breadwinner’s
employment security. In this way, theKoizumi government had to promotewomen’s active labor participation as anintegral part of its signature political agenda.
To achieve this, it exploited the notion of theeconomic merits of gender equality discussed
in the 1990s. Yet, the government
concurrently carried out labor deregulation,
which resulted in further widening gender
gaps in the labor market by pushing many
women into irregular modes of employment.
In other words, the politics of gender equality
was appropriated into the political andeconomic reforms strongly influenced by theneoliberal creed under the Koizumi
government.
The three subsequent LDP governmentsthat followed the Koizumi government, eachof which only lasted about a year, made lightof family and gender policy reforms, despite
the fact that anxieties over everyday family
life exacerbated due to the spread ofprecarious employment and economic
setbacks triggered by the global financial
crisis. The reasons as to why family policy
reforms remained undeveloped during thethree post-Koizumi governments weremanifold. To start with, none of them could
stay in office long enough to implement
meaningful policies. In addition, the negative
impacts of structural reform policy on
everyday life, exemplified by an increase in

the numbers of people who economicallystruggle, became more visible by the time
Koizumi left, and all the post-Koizumi
governments had to handle strong antipathies
towards the reforms carried out by theirpredecessor (Ōta 2010; Shimizu 2009;
Nagato 2012). The first Abe and Asōgovernments, the latter was directly hit by the
global financial crisis in 2007-2008,
exhibited not only a withdrawal from thepolicy line of the Koizumi government’s
structural reforms, but also a clear preference
for maintaining conservative cultural andhistorical values (Uesugi 2007; Yomiuri
Shinbun Seiji-bu 2009). As Nakakita Kōji
points out, their support bases within the LDP
were firmly rooted in the right-wing factions(Nakakita 2014: 227-237). The Fukuda
government acknowledged the importance ofdeveloping policies to provide Japanesepeople with “security” and “safety” (anshin,anzen) in everyday life, and proposed
policies to expand employment opportunities
for women, youths and the elderly (Ōta 2010:200-202), but was so caught up in intra- andinter-party politics that Fukuda stepped down
before fully developing its policy agendas(Yomiuri Shinbun Seiji-bu 2008).6
While
the
post-Koizumi
LDP
governments left aside family policy reforms,
the DPJ as an opposition party actively tookthem up, locating them at the center of theparty’s political agenda, as demonstrated by
the party platform installed in 1998, and aseries of election manifestos from 2005
onwards. The 2009 election, in which the

6 It is worth noting that Fukuda served as Minister of State for Gender Equality under the Koizumi
government.

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DPJ campaigned on slogans such as“Japanese people’s everyday life, first” and“from concrete to human beings,” finallyrealized a full change in government from the
LDP, providing the DPJ with its firstopportunity to run the state and implement
policies that it had long advocated.
The DPJ’s family and gender policies were
multi-faceted but suffice it to say that they
contained some innovative elements. For
example, one of the most highlighted piecesof policy in the 2009 election manifesto, thecash child allowance, was proposed to signal
to the populace that the healthy and sounddevelopment of children, i.e., humanresources that shoulder the nation’s future, isa public concern which should be sharedacross society and hence, should be allocatedgovernment funding (Ōsawa 2013: 404;
Yamaguchi and Nakakita 2014: 8-9). In otherwords, the implementation of the cash childallowance was intended to introduce theprinciple of universalism into Japan’s social
security system. Together with the abolitionof tuition fees for students studying at
publicly-run high schools (subsidies forstudents attending private high schools), andthe re-installment of additional funds given tochildren living in single mother households
receiving the Livelihood Security Benefits,

第 21 号2018 年

the DPJ’s policy was designed to support theupbringing of children residing in Japan
universally. Accordingly, it did not set
conditions such as an income cap forreceiving the Allowance. This idea was,nevertheless, not sufficiently communicatedto the Japanese populace, inviting fierce
criticism from not only the LDP and otherpolitical parties but also Japanese people as asymbol of irresponsible pork-barrel politics(Hagiwara 2013). Indeed, a series of voting
behavior analyses of the 2009 generalelection have pointed out that voters’decisions were made based on discontent
with the past LDP governments’ performance
rather than on differences in terms of policymaking, and the cash child allowance did not
attract a high rate of support (Hino 2009;
Maeda 2011). 7 The cash child allowance
was increasingly made a political
battleground in which non-DPJ actors tried toprove the DPJ’s incompetency andineffectiveness as the governing party, andthe policy was eventually compromised byintroducing an income cap, in other words,
withdrawing universalism and changing its
title back to Jidō Teate, a title used under the
LDP government (which also means “childallowance”).8
The DPJ also produced several policies

7 Analyzing public survey results conducted in the mid and late 2000s, Abe Aya reports that general
expectations over the quality of life of children living in the economically-struggling households
appear lower in Japan than in other industrially advanced countries. For example, only 33.7 percent of the respondents agree with the statement that all children should have at least a set of newlybought (i.e., not passed down from others) clothes (A. Abe 2008: 184-188). Such survey results
suggest that the universalism did not have a popular support base among voters when the DPJ tried
to introduce it.
8 It has by now been well documented that the idea of cash child allowance being a medium tointroduce universalism into Japan’s social security system was not shared even among DPJ MPs.

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Between Reproduction and Production: Womenomics and the Japanese Government’s Approach to Women and
Gender Policies

towards the end of its office to activate andpromote the female labor force. One of thesepolicies was the “Action Plan for Economic
Revitalization through Women’s Active
Labor
Participation,”theso-called“Operation Working Nadeshiko9,” announced
in June 2012, which proposed concrete plans
to increase the number of female employees
at private firms, and promote their positions
within the corporate hierarchy. Following
this, a report entitled “The Visualization of
Women’s Labor Participation” was compiled
by a government committee to which Kathy
Matusi, the leading author of thewomenomics reports, was appointed as acommittee member. It was the National
Strategy Council (Kokka Senryaku Kaigi)
situated within the Cabinet Secretariat that
hosted the meetings to compile the Operation
Working Nadeshiko and the policy was
explicitly positioned as a vital component of
the Japan Revitalization Plan (Nippon Saisei
Senryaku), an economic growth policy
approved by the Noda government which
aimed at revitalizing the national economy bystimulating innovation, and in so doing,achieving recovery from the economic
setback after the 2007-2008 crisis and thetriple disaster in March 2011. The link
between Japan’s economic recovery and theactivation of the female labor force wasstated in a straightforward manner in the very
beginning of the Operation Working
Nadeshiko. It reads:
The most important potential for
revitalizing the national economy and society
is “women.” Women’s active economic andsocial participation will compensate thedecliningproductive-age
population.
Furthermore, it will be a drive to introduce
new thinking and, in so doing, stimulateinnovation and energize different sectors of
the national economy.
(Cabinet Secretariat 2012)
On this understanding, the Operation
Working
Nadeshikoproposedtheimplementation of policies in three areas,
namely, consciousness-raising among men,the implementation of drastic positive action
and the introduction of active initiatives in
the public sector.
Summarizing the above, the trajectory offamily policy reforms as well as genderequality politics since the 1990s
demonstrates that the policy-making process
has always been closely linked with theframework of the “economic argument,”
except for the first Abe and Asō governments.
Throughout this process, the activation andpromotion of the female labor force hascontinuously been posited as a channel to

As a result, when the policy was criticized, the DPJ was unable to unanimously provide a counterargument. Furthermore, the level of the allowance (26,000 yen per month) was set at the decisionof the then party leader, Ozawa Ichirō, by raising the initial figure of 16,000 yen per month. Somesenior party members openly contested Ozawa’s decision in the process of finalizing the 2009
manifesto due to fiscal concerns (Yamaguchi and Nakakita 2014: 21-36).
9 Nadeshiko refers to a kind of flower which conventionally signifies an ideal type of Japanese
woman. The policy was compiled after Japan’s female national football team called Nadeshiko
Japan won the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup.

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revitalize and stimulate national economic
growth. That is to say, the basic approach topolicy-making falls into a category of“productivist,” discussed by Ian Holliday(2000) as the characteristics of welfare
capitalism in East Asia. According to
Holliday, the productivist paradigm isdefined by “two central aspects,” namely, “agrowth-oriented state and the subordinationof all aspects of state policy, including social
policy, to economic/industrial objectives.”
As the discussion of gender equality wasappropriated to advance neoliberal labor
deregulation through structural reform in theearly 2000s and, in the process, reduced
semantically to co-participation in the labormarket (whose gender bias was strengthened
via neoliberal labor reforms), the politicalgoal of achieving gender equality became
obscured.10 Abenomics-womenomics needs
to be understood in the context of such policy
developments.
Indeed, just a quick comparison of
Abenomics-womenomics with previous
policies can establish a substantial degree ofcontinuity. For example, the much-advocatednumerical target of 30 per cent of women
occupying leadership positions was initiallyintroduced by the Gender Equality
Promotion Headquarters (Danjo Kyōdō
Sankaku Suishin Honbu) 11 within the
Cabinet, under the Koizumi government inJune 2003. This target was incorporated into
the third Gender Equality Basic Plan (Danjo

第 21 号2018 年

Kyōdō Sankaku Kihon Keikaku) compiled
under the DPJ government in 2010, which
presented concrete plans for policy-making
and implementation to the end of 2015
(Cabinet Office Gender Equality Bureau2010). In other words, the Abe government
was institutionally obligated to engage withthis agenda upon taking office. The othermajor policy items, such as the introductionof financial incentives for private firms via
taxation, subsidies and public purchases,
career-building support for non-working
mothers, raising the awareness of men,alongside the long-term issue of nurseryshortages in the Abenomics-womenomics
policy package, were proposed in Operation
Working Nadeshiko. As such, despite its title
carrying the Prime Minister’s family name,
Abenomics-womenomics policy is by nomeans unique to the second Abe government.
The continuity observed in the
Abenomics-womenomics policy package
might have been something to be welcomed
if had offered policy stability andeffectiveness; ultimately, the objective is toachieve the policy goal of promoting thefemale labor force. Yet, the analysis ofdiscrepancies between the realities ofworking women in Japan and the Abegovernment’s
policy-making
rhetoric
discussed below indicates that the
government has been acting without an
informed understanding of the actual state of
women’s labor in Japan.

10 On this point, see, for example, Ōsawa’s criticism towards the Koizumi government’s labor andsocial security reforms (2002: 167-198).
11 The headquarters was set up in 1994 to advance policies to facilitate creation of a gender equal
society. It is composed of all ministerial members and the Prime Minister serves as the Chair.

59

Between Reproduction and Production: Womenomics and the Japanese Government’s Approach to Women and
Gender Policies

Floating Rhetoric and Neglected Problems
As aforementioned, it was in 2003 when
the target of 30 per cent of all leadership
positions to be held by women was first
introduced, and the Abe government’s policy
to promote women’s labor highlighted thistarget more than 10 years after the initial
goal-setting. A quick glance at statistical data,
nevertheless, informs us that there had been
little progress made in meeting the 2003
target, and women had remained largely
marginalized in Japan’s labor market before
the Abenomics-womenomics policy was
initiated. According to the 2014 Gender
Equality White Paper released by the Cabinet
Office, the proportion of female managerial
workers (namely, those who occupy positionsof section chief or above) was recorded at
11.2 per cent in 2013 (Cabinet Office Gender
Equality Bureau 2014b: 62). Compared to2003, certainly more women were inmanagerial positions, but the extent of theincrement over 10 years appears very
modest: from 3.1 per cent to 5.1 per cent for
departmental manager positions, from 4.6 percent to 8.5 per cent for section chief positions
and 9.4 per cent to 15.4 per cent for assistantmanager positions (Cabinet Office Gender
Equality Bureau 2004: 67; Cabinet Office
Gender Equality Bureau 2014b: 63). More
importantly, the problem of women’s
peripheral positioning stemmed not only
from the corporate hierarchy but also thestructural distortion of the labor market. In
2013, 55.8 per cent of the total number offemale workers were in some types ofirregular employment (part-time, temps andfringe workers), and if we look at figures for60

different age groups, the proportion exceeds
50 per cent for all age groups except for age
25–34 (41.4 per cent) (Cabinet Office Gender
Equality Bureau 2014b: 56-59). The numberof irregular workers has generally been on an
upward trend for the last twenty years among
both men and women (Mitsuyama 2011; Imai
2011; Suzuki 2015; Watanabe 2015) but there
are also substantial gaps between thepercentages of women and men. For example,
in the age group 25–34, the proportion ofirregular workers amounted to 16.4 per centfor men vis-à-vis 41.4 per cent for women in2013 (Cabinet Office Gender Equality
Bureau 2014b: 60). The differences in termsof job status between men and women havedirect pay implications. The overall gender
pay gap was 71.3 in 2013, having reduced
slightly from 67.6 in 2003 (Cabinet Office
Gender Equality Bureau 2004: 68-69;
Cabinet Office Gender Equality Bureau
2014b: 62-64). Yet, if we compare female
part-time workers’ average pay with that ofmale regular workers, female part-timeworkers generally earn about half of theirmale counterparts (50.7 versus 100 in 2013)(ibid.). These figures demonstrate that thelabor market in Japan remains an unattractive
place for women, just as in 2003.
The numerical target of 30 per cent wastherefore highly ambitious in the sense that it
required the Abe government to not only
attain a policy goal that was initially set 11
years ago in just 6 years, but also reverse along-term trend in Japan’s labor market thatisrootedinstructural
factors.
Acknowledging this problem, the Abegovernment urged business leaders to offer

ジェンダー研究firm commitments to achieve this target, andwith the Prime Minister’s leadership, “AGroup of Male Leaders Who Will Create aSociety in Which Women Shine” (the title is
an official translation from the Japanese:
Kagayaku Josei no Katsuyaku o Kasokusuru
Dansei Rīdā no Kai) was formed, and a“declaration of action” was released in June
2014.12 According to the declaration, the aimof the group is to implement initiatives “toincrease the motivation of a wide variety ofwomen and make it possible for them toutilize their abilities maximally” (cited fromthe provisional translation) by engaging in 1)“taking actions” and “sending messages,” 2)“disrupting the status quo” and 3)“developing networking”.
The group’s title certainly raises questions
about agency as it can be read as implyingthat it is male leaders who can create a society
in which women can “shine” and, in so doing,
motivate them. More fundamentally, thepolitical initiatives exercised through the Abegovernment’s “Male Leaders’ Group”
epitomize the ways in which the Abegovernment conducts policy-making, as
discussed by Yanagisawa Kyōji withreference to defense policy-making(Yanagisawa 2014). In particular, thefollowing three points are noteworthy; first,
the Prime Minister’s leadership tends to be

第 21 号2018 年

emphasized by setting up new machineries
directly subject to the Prime Minister andconsisting of his close allies; second, suchpolicy-making does not necessarily
guarantee that the policy concerned issufficiently informed by expert knowledge;
accordingly, as the third point, what is said inpolicy documents frequently appears
incongruous with or even removed from therealities of everyday life of the Japanesepeople. This certainly raises questions about
the efficacy of the concerned policy, while
underlining the rhetorical nature of the Abegovernment’s policy-making, which tends toresult in disconnecting policy tools frompolicy goals.
In the area of the family and genderpolicies, it is not only the “Male Leaders’Group” that exhibits the above threecharacteristics. Since the initiation of genderequality politics in the 1990s, the Gender
Equality Council and its sub-groups, inwhich academic experts and activists
collaborated with national bureaucrats,
politicians and business leaders, were set up
to play a driving role in the policy-making
process. 13 Upon this extant institutionalframework, the Abe government has
introduced a series of new organizations,most notably, the Headquarters to Create aSociety in Which Every Woman Shines

12 The declaration can be accessed via the Cabinet Office Gender Equality Bureau website(http://www.gender.go.jp/policy/sokushin/male_leaders.html, accessed on November 21, 2014). To
compile the declaration, two meetings were held in May and June 2014 which were attended by 9
male business leaders heading large corporations such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Takeda
Pharmacy and Marui.
13 Women’s movements have long played a vital role in the policy-making process of gender-related
legislation, providing input based on their expertise and grassroots experiences in the concernedareas (Gelb 2003).

61

Between Reproduction and Production: Womenomics and the Japanese Government’s Approach to Women and
Gender Policies(Subete no Josei ga Kagayaku Shakai-dukuri
Honbu) led by the Prime Minister himself
and consisting of ministerial members. The
new Headquarters has been involved indrafting bills, including the Fourth Gender
Equality Basic Plan.
The institutional change through theintroduction of new organizations seems tohave created some knowledge lapses. One
obvious example is a detailed footnote
attached to the term “glass ceiling” in the“Policy Package for Every Woman to Shine”
released by the Headquarters in October
2014 14 . More fundamentally, a close
examination of the statistical data detailing
women’s labor market participation informs
us that the target of 30 per cent of leadership
positions for women appears not just a
difficult policy goal, but rather anunattainable one, even at the beginning of the
Abenomics-womenomics policy. To start
with, in some industries such as construction
and manufacturing, the proportion of female
employees itself recorded below the target of
30 per cent, 15.4 per cent for construction and28.9 per cent for manufacturing in 2013
(Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare
2013: 93). On top of this, as the figures
mentioned earlier indicate, more than half offemale workers today were irregular workers.

Naturally, very few women have been
selected as candidates for managerial
positions to receive relevant skills training.
Furthermore, labor participation rates for
women, broken down by the levels of
educational attainment and age group,
demonstrate that women with university
degrees are less likely to go back to the labormarket in their 30s and 40s compared to thosewith high school diplomas-- in other words,
better educated women appear more reluctant
to return to the labor market (Higuchi 2009:124-126). Meanwhile, according to the panel
survey by the National Institute of Populationand Social Security Research, only 38.0 per
cent of female workers remained in
employment after giving birth to their firstchild, with the figure following the birth of
the second child reducing to 23.1 per cent(National Institute of Population and Social
Security Research 2012: 45-46). All in all,the policy goal set by the Abe government in2014 appears detached from the statistical
data of working women in Japan.
Academic experts specializing in women’slabor have long discussed these issues(Takeishi 2009; Estevez-Abe 2013;
Nishimura 2014; Ōsawa 2015). Under thecurrent setting of Japan’s labor market, career
breaks created through marriage and

14 Literally translating, the footnote reads as follows:
It is a metaphor to describe a situation in which employees who deserve promotion are unable
to advance because of their gender or other reasons at private firms and alike as an invisible
ceiling blocking career progression.
This is the only footnote in the entire Policy Package and there is no explanation why this oftmentioned term that can be easily spotted in discourses circulated through the mass media required
such a detailed explanation.

62

ジェンダー研究childbirth, combined with age, significantly
narrow opportunities for women in their 30s
and 40s to regain a regular worker’s position,
and as mentioned earlier, the pay and job
conditions offered to irregular workers are
not thrilling. On top of this, Japanese men, inparticular those who work for large
corporations and tend to be married to
women with university degrees, are known
internationally for working long hours,
leaving the task of childcare with their wives.
Thus, the law of Arisawa-Douglas, which
posits the negative relationship between thelevel of women’s labor participation and thelevel of their husband’s income is valid in thiscase, because there are few worthwhile job
opportunities for married women with
university degrees (Yokoyama 2005;
Wakisaka and Okui 2005; Tachibanaki 2008).
That being said, the core problem to be
tackled to encourage the non-working female
population to return to work is, first, theinstitutional and structural disparities
between regular and irregular workers and,second, the long working hours that Japanese
men tend to endure.
This was certainly acknowledged byprevious policies, with both the Third Gender
Equality Basic Plan and the Operation
Working Nadeshiko, including scope for
dealing with issues of unequal treatment
stemmed from employment status and men’slong working hours. In contrast, the proposalof the bill concerning the promotion of
female labor resubmitted in the 2015 Diet
Session placed a focus on women’s careerbuilding in the face of “rapid fertility decline”
and “socio-economic changes.” The bill was

第 21 号2018 年

modified through deliberations in the Diet byadding amendments requested by the
opposition parties. The revised text
acknowledges that the promotion of women’s
working life is a human rights issue andrequires the government to tackle problems
resulting from employment status, as well as
men’s long working hours. On thisunderstanding, the Basic Guidelines toPromote Women’s Working Life (Josei no
Shokugyō Seikatsu ni okeru Katsuyaku no
Suishin ni kansuru Kihon Hōshin ni tsuite)
was compiled and approved by the Cabinet
after the legislation of the bill in September
2015, which requested the allocation of abudget to administratively support anincrease in the number of regular workers
and to raise men’s awareness about childrearing.
The Abe government further amended its
policy package in response to the criticism
leveled at previous policy proposals when it
was updated to the “Dynamic Engagement of
All Citizens” in November 2015. While thenumerical target of 30 per cent was sidelined,
the new policy package acknowledged thatthe government needed to engage in the issueof the unfavorable employment conditions ofirregular workers, the long working hours ofmale workers and widespread poverty amonglone mother households. Indeed, the Abegovernment now highlights the need forreform of the employment system andpractices, including the introduction of theprinciple of equal pay for equal work andmore strict regulations on overtime, and Diet
deliberations over these issues are ongoing.
While the legislation on these issues is long63

Between Reproduction and Production: Womenomics and the Japanese Government’s Approach to Women and
Gender Policies

awaited, and if realized, being equipped witheffective policy tools, it should contribute to
the improvement of working conditions for
all irregular workers, not just women. Thissuggests, on the one hand, that critiquemounted by the opposition parties andacademic experts is vital to ensure that the
Abe government’s policy-making works, bypointing out neglected and overlooked
problems due to the lapse of policy expertise.
On the other hand, both the introduction of
the principle of equal pay for equal work andmore strict regulations on overtime could
possibly incur substantial costs for employers.
This certainly raises some questions about
the feasibility of the proposed policies, asthese measures are inconsistent with the Abegovernment’s economic and industrial
policies which have been in pursuit of further
reduction of economic burdens placed upon
global corporations. More fundamentally,
Mitsuyama Masako, a labor sociologist who
has investigated the impact of the
deregulation of the supermarket industry on
the rank and file employees, mainlycomprised of female part-time workers, haspointed out that many female workers find it
difficult to remain the position of regular
workers due to the extended opening hours ofsupermarkets resulting from deregulation,
since family commitments often prevent
them from working flexibly (Mitsuyama
2016). That is to say, issues related tostructural disparities between regular andirregular workers, and long working hours
cannot be tackled without challenging
neoliberalized industrial policies. In otherwords, what is required here seems to be a64

critical review of the productivist paradigm
that prioritizes economic growth over otherpolitical needs. Yet, as suggested by the
Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare(MHLW) guidelines of the equal pay for
equal work issued in December 2016, which
recognizes the prospect of transfer orsecondment as a legitimate reason for pay
differentials, the introduction of this principle
has already been compromised in favor of
employers; in this way, the productivist
paradigm still drives the policy-making
process in Japan.

Conclusion
A detailed exploration of the Abegovernment’s policy moves to promotewomen’s participation in the labor market
illuminates their innate limitations. The Abegovernment’s policy-making shares muchcommon ground with that of the previous
governments, in the sense that it is rooted in
the productivist paradigm, while displaying
clear signs of a lack of policy expertise. The
policy packages proposed so far have been
amended in response to the criticism
proffered by the opposition parties andacademic experts. However, to overcome theproblems that exist within Japan’s
employment system, it is essential thatpolicy-making depart from the productivist
paradigm. Yet, there is little sign that this will
happen in the near future.
In the meantime, policies concerning
women’s reproductive roles are concurrently
developing. Indeed, during the same Diet
session hosting the deliberations about thebill to promote the female labor force, a draftジェンダー研究第 21 号2018 年

government now actively promotes tax
incentives for three-generation cohabitation inwhich care work (for both children and theelderly) would be conducted as a family matter,just as in “Japanese Type of Welfare Society,”an LDP vision of the welfare reform in the
1980s that regarded women’s care work as the“hidden asset” of the Japanese economy. In thissense, the overall process of family and genderpolicy reforms under the Abe government canbe read as an intensified version of the old,familiar political message for women: be agood reproductive agent while engaging in paid
employment to an extent determined by market
standards and allowed by family commitments(Takeda 2005; 2008a; Gottfried 2015). The
processes of family policy reforms andgender equality politics since the 1990s were
initiated by acknowledging that this message
no longer worked for many women due to thesocio-economic changes. Twenty years later,
it seems that the reform process has
retrogressed as women are urged to “shine”
while the idea of gender equality has been
marginalized in the framework of policy
discussions.

bill outlining comprehensive support for
women’s health was also submitted. This has
been followed by government policy
proposals including the Guideline for
Tackling Birth Rate Declining Society(Shōshika Shakai Taisaku Taikō), which sets
a numerical target for bumping up total
fertility rates, while the aforementioned“Policy Package for Every Woman to Shine”
lists issues concerning marriage, childbirthand family-forming as the top items, taking
up greater space in the document than thediscussion of employment issues. All thesepolicy proposals point to the Abegovernment’s
strongconcernoverdemographic issues, which are now
described officially as in “a state of crisis that
may erode the bedrock of society and theeconomy.” Given that only women can
reproduce in the current scientificenvironment, the introduction of a numericaltarget explicitly indicating a particular levelof total fertility rate evokes a wartime slogan,“give birth, multiply,” which was widely
spread within Japanese society to promotethen pronatalist policies. Furthermore, theReferences

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（掲載決定⽇：2018 年 4 ⽉ 4 ⽇）

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Between Reproduction and Production: Womenomics and the Japanese Government’s Approach to Women and
Gender Policies

要旨

ウーマノミクスから日本における女性・ジェンダー政策を考える：
生産と再生産の間
Hiroko Takeda
本論⽂の⽬的は、安倍晋三政権による「⼥性の活（⽤）躍」の政治過程を 1990 年以来の家族／ジェンダー政策の展開に位置づけることによって理解することにある。このため、本稿ではまず「⼥性の活（⽤）躍」政策が基づくアイディアであるウーマノミクス（Womenomics）
を検討し、それが⼥性の積極的な労働市場への参加を⽇本経済の成⻑の⼿段として位置づけていることを確認する。経済成⻑の実現が最終的な政策⽬標として設定されるのは、イアン・ホリディ（Ian Holliday）が「⽣産主義パラダイム」（productivist paradaigm）と呼んだ東アジ
アの社会政策に観察される特徴であるが、安倍政権の「⼥性の活（⽤）躍」政策にもこうした傾向が認められ、この点において 1990 年代以来の⼥性／ジェンダー政策と⼀定の連続性が存在している。経済成⻑優先という安倍政権による「⼥性の活（⽤）躍」政策の特徴は、労働市場における⼥性の状況を改善するためには不可⽋な雇⽤形態間の格差の是正などの働き⽅改⾰の進展を制約する可能性もあり、今後の政治過程により⼀層の注意を払うことが必要である。

キーワード
ウーマノミクス、⼥性とジェンダー政策、⽇本の政策、ジェンダー平等、⽣産主義パラダイム《筆者紹介》

Hiroko Takeda is Professor of Political Analysis at the Graduate School of Law, Nagoya
University. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Sheffield, and taught at Cardiff
University, the University of Sheffield and the University of Tokyo prior to taking up the current
post. She specializes in political sociology and her research interests include gender andpolitics/political economy in Japan and East Asia, biopolitics/governmentality and governance,and political discourse analysis. Her major publications include, The Political Economy ofPreproduction in Japan: Between Nationa-State and Everyday Life (RoutledgeCurzon 2005),
articles in New Political Economy, The Handbook of Japanese Politics, Power in Contemporary
Japan.

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