NAKAMURA
GIRLS’ HIGH SCHOOL
Nakamura International
CourseClass of 2017
Thesis Projects

Table of Contents
Introduction ……………………………………………………………....3
Gender and Sportby Momo Ito …………………………………………………….………...5
How Can We Make Our City Clean?
by Sawano Ogura…………………………………………………........16
Gender and Animation - A Comparison Between Canada and Japan
by Yui Kadono………………….………………………….………..…..27
Gender Equality in the Work Placeby Fuka Kitazawa……………………………………………….………40

Gender and Tourism in Australia and Japan
by Yuuka Nakano……………………………………………………….52
Gender Gap of Flight Attendants in Japan and the U.S.
by Chihana Haga ……………………………………………………….63
Differences of Family Gender Gap between Japan and New Zealand
By Yuka Fujiwara………………………………………………………..73
Volunteering in Portland, U.S.A
by Yuki Mori ……………………………………………………………..832

Introduction
The Nakamura International Course students, class of 2017, havestudied abroad for 12 months in English speaking countries during
their 2nd year of high school and completed a thesis project. The
students first chose a topic and related to gender issues connected
to it. They then conducted research about their topic at libraries or on
the internet. While the students were studying abroad, they
conducted more research in local libraries and carried out face toface interviews with at least four people in order to collect data for
their thesis as well as to learn more about their topics in their hostcountry. The students have critically analyzed their research andinterviews and have written a thesis paper. In addition they havegiven a thesis presentation about what they have learned from theseexperiences. Enclosed are the thesis essays written by each student.
（Natacha Sakamoto & Norio Hayakawa）

Nakamura International Course Class of 2017
Momo Ito
Sawano Ogura
Yui Kadono
Fuka Kitazawa
Yuuka Nakano
Chihana Haga
Yuka Fujiwara
Yuki Mori
3

NAKAMURA GIRLS’ HIGH SCHOOL
Nakamura International Course
Thesis Projects～概要～

中村高等学校国際科では、所属生徒全員が高校２年次に１年間の海外留学（英語圏）を経験します。留学中に研究計画に沿って調査を進め、課題論文を作成します。
２０１７年度中村高等学校国際科３年生は、「ジェンダー（社会的・文化的に創り出された男女の違い）」というテーマに果敢に挑戦しました。
少子高齢社会の日本。様々な分野で女性の活躍が期待されています。一方、家庭や職場などでジェンダーの不平等は存在します。世界経済フォーラムにより毎年公表されるジェンダーギャップ指数においても日本は下位に位置しています。
こうした状況の中で、「ジェンダー」というテーマは、女子校の場でこそ取り組むべき課題だと言えます。グローバルキャリアという視点を軸に、「ジェンダーフリー（ジェンダーにとらわれない）」社会のあり方を生徒１人１人が追究しました。
留学前に論文のテーマを決め、調査方法を学びます。留学中も本校の教員（英語を母国語とするネイティブスタッフ）の指導も受けながら、現地の多様な人々にインタビューを実施、さらに図書館や資料館など必要な機関を訪ね、フィー
ルドワークを行います。調査結果を整理し、帰国後に論文としてまとめました。
昨年度に引き続き、その成果を掲載いたします。

4

Gender andsportsMomo Ito5

Introduction

Someone once said, “Every time I step onto the pitch all of my troubles
go away, and only thing that matters on the field is the beautiful game.” This
quote shows how I feel about soccer. How about you? Do you like sports? I
guess everyone likes either playing or watching sports, and some people like
both. For me, I like both playing and watching sports, especially soccer. Do you
think that there is a language barrier in sport? These are some of the questions I
had about sports last year, but in this essay, I want to focus on gender. Theremay be some differences in how women and men play, watch, and think about
sports. Furthermore, this might depend on the country such as in Japan and6Canada. In this essay, I will write about the differences in high school clubs,
national leagues, and attitude about sports in these two countries.

Background Research
The reason why I chose this topic is because I like soccer a lot. I thinkplaying sports but also watching sports can help people to communicate andbuild friendship with one another. Before I went to Canada, I just knew that the
Canadian national female soccer team is really strong. It is ranked 4th in FIFA
(2016); however, soccer is getting as popular as hockey in Canada for both ofwomen and men. The Japanese soccer female team is strong as well, they holdthe 7th place. I found one similarity between Japan and Canada is that both men
and women are given the opportunity to play soccer. Both national male teams
are not so strong, but soccer is still really popular in both countries.

Through my study abroad, one more thing that I learned about Canadais that hockey is Canada’s national sport and is really famous and popular. In
Japan, hockey is not a sport that people watch, nor talk about. On the other hand,
7when I was in Canada, almost everyone likes watching hockey, and cheer for
their favorite teams. During my homestay, I lived near Vancouver, so my friends
and host family were fans of the Vancouver Canucks, which is one of the hockey
teams of the NHL (National Hockey League).

Furthermore, if you are a famous hockey player, you can become very
successful at business. For example, one of the most famous hockey players
ever is Tim Horton. He played for 25 years, and was known for his great defense
skills. He led his team to victory many times. In 1964, he opened a doughnut
shop in Ontario, but in 1974, he passed away because of a car accident. After
his death, his business partner bought his shop for one million dollars andexpanded the shops all over in Canada. He named the shop “Tim Hortons”, andthere are over 3,500 shops in Canada today, they have also expanded into theUnited States (Commito and Snyder, 2015).

8

Do you know that Canada has two national sports? One of them ishockey as you know, and the other one is lacrosse (Government of Canada,2016). Lacrosse is not as popular as hockey, but there is also a national league
for it. Japan’s national sport is sumo. From a foreigner’s perspective, sumo might
be an interesting sport because I do not think sumo has any similar sports to it.
In addition, women can do sumo wrestling, but in unlike Canada’s national
sports, a national female league does not exist.
Another, one thing I noticed was the differences between how sports
activities are done in high schools. In Japanese high school, students join ateam for a year, but Canadian high school students play sports for just a few
months. A similarity is that both boys and girls have the opportunity to play allkinds of sports. I think that there is a little difference between both types ofplaying sports, on the school teams for a whole year or just a few months. In
Japan, students can get together and are able to play one sport really well;
however, Canadian students can play many different sports over the course of a
year.

9

Supporting Arguments
I spent most of time in Canada last year. While I was there, I asked somequestions related to sports to three females and one male; Taylor (pseudonym)
and Emma (pseudonym) are from Canada, Ashley (pseudonym) is from theCongo but has lived in Canada for five years. Daniel (pseudonym) is from Korea
but has lived in Canada for four years. Let’s have a look at the questions that I
asked and their answers.
First, I am going to tell you how popular soccer is. As I mentioned in the
background research, soccer is a really popular sport for both women and men
in Canada (Colin, 2016). Emma and Daniel answered that they like soccer. They
also mentioned that both women and men play soccer all over the world. Both ofthem also support soccer teams. Emma supports Chelsea, which is in England,
and Barcelona, which is in Spain. Daniel supports Real Madrid, which is in Spainas well. In fact, many people like to support their favorite soccer team because it
is fun to talk about with friends. In their home countries which are Congo andKorea, soccer is a really popular sport, they answered. Ashley said soccer isbecoming as popular as hockey in Canada as well. From this information, soccer
is one of the most popular sports in the world. Of course in Japan, soccer is10

popular for both women and men.

Second, I would like you to know about national sports for Canada and Japan.
Canadian national sports are hockey and lacrosse, as I said previously, and theJapanese national sport is sumo. Hockey is like a symbol of Canada. Ashley and
Taylor support Vancouver Canucks which is a national hockey team in
Vancouver. All of them said that the most popular sport for Canadians is hockey,
but Taylor doesn’t really like hockey because it seems dangerous to play.
However, lacrosse is not a very popular sport. Ashley and Taylor said they don’tknow anybody who plays lacrosse. On the other hand, In Japan, many people
watch the game of sumo on TV. Especially older people like it. There are somesumo practice gyms near my school. One of the huge differences between
Canada’s national sports and Japan’s national sport is that females cannot play
Japan’s national sport, sumo in a national league.

11

Third, from a high school student’s perspective, there is an interesting
difference. Japanese high school students usually belong to a club activity thatthey like, and they keep continuing until they graduate the high school. On theother hand, Japanese high school students usually have to study for really
important exams to enroll at a good university, so their teachers make themretire from it. For me, I belong to the soccer club in my school for 5 years since I
enrolled in junior high school. It has been really good experience because I
learned a lot of things. Not only how to play soccer, but also manners, leadershipand so on. On the other hand, as I mentioned earlier, Canadian high school
students play two to three sports for a year. They like to try new things, so eventhough they have never played the sport, they just try it. Each span is about
three months. When I stayed in Canada, I belonged to the soccer team in myschool. I didn’t really know how seasonal sports work then. So, when girls’soccer season was finished after three months, I was a bit surprised because it
was too short for me. I am really into soccer, so I still wanted more time. I felt it
was not enough to play for only three months. However, I felt that Canadian highschool students could play, any “popular” sports such as soccer, basketball, andvolleyball, despite this system.

12

Lastly, I found some other interesting facts from the interviews. The
questions that I asked are below:
1) Is the feeling different when you watch the female’s game and when you
watch the male’s game?
2) Do you think that it is okay that there are only female’s sports and only male’s
sports?
For question 1, Emma and Daniel answered yes, Ashley answered it depends
on levels, and Taylor answered no. The reason why they said yes is that the
male’s game is more exciting than the female’s game because men are stronger
than women. Ashley said that for the professional level, she feels the same
because both men and women are talented, however, for the other levels; themale’s game is more interesting because they have more skills and it is moreengaging. Taylor doesn’t feel different at all. I agree with Emma and Daniel forthe same reason. For example, even though the Canadian national female
soccer team is strong and male soccer team is weak, male team would bestronger than female team. However, both games are fun to watch. In question 2,
all of them said no because that’s unfair. So if women want to play men’s sport, it
should be allowed. I agree with them, but if it is traditional or national sport, like13

sumo, we have to think about it carefully because it might have a valid reason
why either men or women are allowed to play.

Conclusion

Before I started to research about gender and sports, I didn’t really know
how gender and sports are related, but I found that they are closely related. Most
sports now don’t have discrimination between men and women. Each country
has a national and popular sport. “Sport” can be a common word for all people in
the world and therefore beyond border. One of the examples of this is the
Olympic Games. It is for sure the biggest sports event in the world. Its purpose isto keep peace in the world through the medium of sports. Every time the Olympic
Games come, all people in the world support their countries, and they are
impressed. The world would be better, and get along well through sports only.
14

Sports can destroy borders, races, and gender. Then, why don’t we use thepower of sports to build a better society?

ReferencesFIFA (2016) “women’s ranking”, (December 23, 2016)
http://www.fifa.com/fifa-world-ranking/ranking-table/women/index.html

Commito, M., Snyder, L. (2015) “Tim Horton” (October 16, 2015)
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/tim-horton/

Government of Canada (2016) “Sport in Canada” (March 9, 2016)
http://canada.pch.gc.ca/eng/1414151906468

Colin, J. (2016) “Soccer” (October 20, 2016)
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/soccer/

15

How can we make ourcity clean?

Sawano Ogura

December 28, 2016

Nakamura high school

Nakamura International Course Thesis Paper Project16

Introduction
Have you ever thought about the environment? Do you like dirty roads?
When you think about the environment, do you think the world is completely
clean? My research is about the environment and who is helping the most. I
wanted to know if men or women help the most. Furthermore in the UnitedStates of America and in Japan volunteering for the environment might bedifferent.

Background
The reason why I chose this topic is that I saw some roads are dirty inPortland. In 2016, I was in Portland in the United States of America to study
English and American culture for a year. I then realized that there were twodifferent places in Portland, the dirty area which was very dirty and the clean
area which was very clean. In Tokyo, I don’t think we have very dirty areas,even though roads near the beach or near the river sometimes have a lot of17

trash. At the time, I started to think that Tokyo has many more people thanNorth America does. In that case, why doesn’t Tokyo have many dirty roads,
too. This might be because of how there are many more homeless people wholive in Portland. I felt that there were many homeless in Portland especially
downtown. During my time there I saw they throw trash away directly on theroads.

Number of homeless people inTokyo and Portland
Tokyo

0

500

1000

1500

Portland

2000

2500

3000

3500

4000

(Portland Oregon, 2017)
I feel that the air in Tokyo is dirtier than in Portland. The reason why isthat it is densely populated in Tokyo and hybrid cars are not popular in Japan;
however people who live in Portland mostly drive hybrid cars. They also have
tried to make an environment in which people do not use their cars and this18

helps people to interact with one another, as well as helping the air to becleaner.
In Japan, we think that hobbies, work, and doing volunteering are threedifferent things but in the United States of America, people think that volunteer
work is for their own profit. Thirty percent of high school students are doing
volunteer work in Japan (Kknews, 2017). The major reason for this is that only
their school has programs for volunteering but in the U.S. Sixty percent of thehigh school students are doing volunteer work and this is because they choose
to do it for themselves, their parents, their friends, their teachers or other
adults suggested it to them (Kknews, 2017).
Portland succeeded in becoming a compact city. Tokyo, however, is not
a compact city because a 2014 estimate puts the population at 38 million. It
covers an area of about 13,000 square kilometers, giving it a population
density of 2,800 people per square kilometers (Galka, 2015). It is the second
largest single metropolitan area in the world. The person who had the idea ofmaking Portland a compact city was Neil Goldschmidt (The Oregon
Encyclopedia, 2017). He is an American businessman and democratic
politician from the state of Oregon and was a rising national political star. He

19

attended the University of Oregon. He promoted the revitalization of
Downtown Portland and was influential on Portland-area transportation policy.
He worked across party lines to reduce regulation and to repair the state's
infrastructure.

(Neil Goldschmidt)
I researched on the internet about whether women take part involunteering for the environment more than men and I found that they do(Jissen, 2011). I think it is because women have more affection than men do.
In my opinion they have a mind to protect beautiful things and weak things andthey can put ideas into action straight away. Simply put, I believe women are20

strong in a maternal instinct and the men are strong in combative instinct,
furthermore I can say men don’t recognize the environment maintenance as asocial problem; as a result they are likely to ignore women’s opinions. That is
why men seem to care less about environmental problems.

Argument
I interviewed my teachers at school when I was in America to study
English two months ago. During my interview, most people said that they dosome volunteer work for the environment. They are recycling paper and one of
my interviewees restores old houses and clean up trash. I think that recycling
paper is a very good thing because we are using a lot of papers and we waste somuch paper every day.
My interviewees also think people who do volunteer work are wonderful
and important. I think so, too. I think people who do volunteer work are very
sweet people because they can take care of some things even it is not related tothem. In addition, the participants think that if someone is passionate about thisfield, it does not matter about their gender when doing volunteer work. I think it isbecause the important thing is teamwork’s cooperation. If there are many people

21

but they are not doing as well as a team, it is not going to be good. On the other
hand, if there are few people but they are being cooperative, it is going to be
good.
Next, I will talk about the infamous earthquake that took place in the
Northeast of Japan. It happened on March 11, 2011. There was sadness,suffering and anxiety after Tohoku earthquake. On that day, a seven intensity
earthquake, with the magnitude of 9.0, was observed (Maff , 2017). The deaths
toll was over twenty thousand people. Most people lost their lives because of thetsunami. I was very shocked, and I watched TV in tears. One of the things I was
upset about was that some people suffered due to lack of supplies in shelters. I
felt unable to do anything to help them. After several days, the earthquake had
passed, and we saw on the morning news that there were some high school
students who took the lead in working with shelters. Food was supplied free ofcharge. I wanted to try to do something for others at that time.
As you know, volunteers are still working hard every day for environment
in the Northeast of Japan. They have seven things that they are caring about
when doing volunteering work.

22

1.

Dress appropriately for the cold.

2.

Wear work clothes, including boots and gloves, etc.

3.

Have proper identification and insurance–some places will not accept
you unless you do.

4.

Not taking pictures

5.

For day-work, expected to supply your own food and water, and toilet
paper, etc.

6.

Be ready to work hard, at least for a while; but be ready to stand aroundwaiting, also. That is part of the deal.

7.

Go with others….
(Idealist , 2017)
I think it is wonderful to have such rules. Sometimes I think Japan is too

serious for everything. I like this part of Japanese culture when it comes tovolunteering for environment. I saw that many cities which were ruined by atsunami on the TV. I was sad to see it. Those videos expressed how muchsadness there is. I could not see anything such as houses, buildings and schools.
That made me think about what I can do for people living there. I wanted to go tothere and help them but I could not do that because it was too far to go to there. I
23also saw people who lost their family and friends. It was sad. I thought weabsolutely need to do volunteer work for them.

In the future, I want to go to Africa to learn about what can be done about
their environment. I want to be helping more than I can now. We have many
cultural differences between Japan and Africa; it will be interesting to know about
it. I think that one of the problems now is about rubbish affecting thegovernments there more and more. The world is consuming a lot of electronic
products every year and the amount of electronic waste discarded in Africa has
skyrocketed recently. This has caused a dangerous explosion in electronic scrapthat contains toxic chemicals and heavy metals that cannot be disposed of or
recycled safely. Every year, hundreds of thousands of old computers and mobile
phones are exported, often illegally, from Europe, the U.S., Japan, and otherindustrialized countries, to Asia and Africa. There, workers at scrap yards, someof whom are children, are exposed to a cocktail of toxic chemicals and poisons(African solutions, 2017). This is an example of the problems that affect theenvironment. I think we should help with these problems step by step throughvolunteering. I want to be the person who starts helping with these kinds ofproblems and report what we can do and what we should do about it. I want to24

be able to talk with children and adults about what they want to change about
their environment and I want to know about what is more important to them.

Conclusion

My research is about whether men or women are helping the most andhow the difference in how volunteer work is done in America and Japan. We arehaving so many problems about environment and some of people in the world
are working very hard. In my survey, it seems that more people in America aredoing something for environment than Japanese do. In addition, men seem tocare less about environmental problems. During my interviews, I realized thatteamwork’s cooperation is very important when doing volunteer work. The big
earthquake which occurred on March 11, 2011, was a very sad moment; on theother hand, Japan people could learn how important it is to do volunteering. In
the future, I would like to go to Africa to learn more about their environment. It is
important to do volunteering for the future because it affects all of us. We need to
get to know more about environment and help people!! Let’s make your city
clean little by little!

25

References

African solutions (2017) Who is ASAP? (February 06, 2017)https://www.africansolutions.org/volunteer/Galka, M. (2015) What is the population density of Tokyo?, (September 07,2015) https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-population-density-of-Tokyo

Idealist (2017) Why assess your interests? (February 06, 2017)
http://www.idealist.org/info/Volunteer/WhatToDo

Jissen (2011) soumushou heisei 23 nenn shakai seikatu kihonntyousa0(February 06, 2017) https://www.nier.go.jp/jissen/book/h24/pdf/v_05.pdf

Kknews (2017) koukousei no boronntiai shiki, nittibeihikaku, (February 06,
2017 ) www.kknews.co.jp/shogai/kobora.html

Maff (2017) Higashinihon daishinnsai zishinn to tsunami no higaizyoukyou(February 06, 2017) http://www.maff.go.jp/j/pr/aff/1105/spe1_01.html

Oregon encyclopedia (2017) The Oregon Encyclopedia (February 06, 2017)https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/goldschmidt_neil/#.WI8cU4VOLuc

Portland Oregon (2017) Portland Housing Bureau (February 06, 2017)https://www.portlandoregon.gov/phb/60643

26

Gender and Animation~A Comparison between Canada andJapan~Yui Kadono
Nakamura High School
Gender reportFebruary 15th27

Introduction
Recently, Japanese animation has become popular in the world,
especially in the US and France. Why are foreign people attracted to Japanese
cartoons? Is there a gender gap in animation and the animation creator’s
workforce? The director Hiromasa Yonebayashi once said that “Women tend to
be more realistic and manga day-to-day lives well. Men on the other hand tend
to be more idealistic - and fantasy films need that idealistic approach” (Kirby,2016). What do you think about the relation between gender and animation?
Some people think that there is a small gender gap in Japanese animationcompared to foreign animation. This may be true.

Background
According to Kidscreen (2013), 98% of Canadian children who are
between the ages of three to ten years old watch animation cartoons at least
once per week. Furthermore, 80% of Canadian parents watch it once a weekwith their children. In Japan, 49.7% of men, and 51.9% of women are watching
anime (Humetsu, 2017), so women watch anime more than men. Some women
watch animation by themselves, other women watch animation with their28

children. However, when you compare the gender of the audience with their age,
I found some interesting points. Please take a look at the graph below.

(Humetsu, 2016)
First of all, men and women who are between the ages of teens tothirties have a higher audience than other generations. I think these audiences
enjoy watching animations, also they take part in animation events, and they can
buy animation goods. Secondly, more women keep watching anime until after
their forties. I think that the women who are in their forties are watching cartoon
with their children. However, men are watching less anime as they grow older,but I could not find the answer to why this is. In my opinion, I think that adult men
work hard therefore they cannot afford time to watch anime like when the used to
be children.
I investigated on the internet about which anime is popular in Japan, but

29I could not find an answer. Almost all of the animations in Japan used to be a
popular novel or a comic before they were adapted to movies and anime. Manyfans are looking forward to watching anime as soon as the original
announcement of the animation is made. Recently, many anime fans go to apilgrimage to places where popular animations are set. They enjoy not only
watching anime but also visiting the pilgrimage. Please take a look at the
pictures below.

These are some examples of those pilgrimages. The pictures on the left
are in Kyoto, it is the “Demachimasugata shotengai”. This place was the stage ofa famous anime, which is called “Tamako Market”. The pictures on the right are
in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. This anime’s title is “Dyu ra ra ra !”. There are many otherpilgrimages in Japan, in cities such as Tokyo, Kanagawa, and Kyoto. The
30

number of pilgrimages in Tokyo is 1712. Kanagawa has 371, Kyoto has 269,
Saitama has 185, and Chiba has 129. There are many pilgrimages in the Kanto
area such as Tokyo, Chiba, Saitama, Kanagawa, and many popular tourist spots
such as Kyoto (Tomita, 2016).
I have a few reasons for why I have chosen the topic of gender andanimation. I have loved animation since I was twelve years old, and I want to be
an animation editor in the future. Every day after I finish my homework, I always
watch anime, read comics, and animation magazines. Animation makes me
happy, and I feel it helps me be myself. Furthermore, Japanese animation is
popular worldwide. Before doing this research, I had doubts about it. I wondered
about who is translating from Japanese to English? How do foreigners watch
anime, and purchase comics or magazines? I really wanted to know the answers
to these questions. Then I connected my questions about animation with genderissues, and I went to study abroad in order to find the answers.

31

Interview
When I was in Canada, I interviewed four Canadian citizens (two elevento fifteen year old girls, and two forty year old women) about Gender andAnimation. I asked them ten questions about it. In this part of my thesis, I willreport some of my interview results.

First I asked the participants if they feel that there are gender issues inanimation. Everyone whom I interviewed responded that they thought there wasan issue. They told me that in anime the heroes are usually men. Also, they told
me that there are more male characters than the female characters. For
example, “Pokemon”, it is one of the most popular animations in the world, andthe hero is Satoshi, a boy. Another example is “Astro Boy”, it is the oldest
animation in all of Japanese animations, and its hero is Atom, again a boy.
Although there are some exceptions to this, such as, “Princess Mononoke”,

32which is a Studio Ghibli animation. However, the general trend is that the

majority of heroes are male. Why are there many male characters in animation?
(Anime Rankingu, 2016)
In Canada, according to the above graph, 70% of heroes are male and 30% ofheroes are female. For example, some anime in which the male are heroes are“Fullmetal Alchemist”, “Death Note”, “Neon Genesis Evangelion”, “Rurouni
Kenshin”, “Code Geass”. Female heroes in anime include “Spirited Away”,“Princess Mononoke”, and “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya”. Usually, mostof the male heroes are fighting against an antagonist in action anime. On theother hand, the female heroes are princesses or students. In my opinion, whenanime were first written there were many adventure anime, therefore malecharacters were usually the heroes. I think that when female characters fight inaction anime. However, recently, the number of female heroes are increasing inanimation. In Japan, male heroes are 35%, and female heroes are 65%.
Japanese audience watches more female heroes’ anime than Canadians and33

Americans. Most female heroes are students, for example, Keion, Toaru Kagaku
no Railgun, Charlotte. When I interviewed Canadian citizens, they mentioned tome that they hope to be able to watch cartoons in which female characters are
heroes. Maybe, you can watch more female heroes in animation. Please look at
the pictures below. These are some example of heroes in animation.
The Male Heroes

34

The female heroes

Men

Women

StrongWeak

Saving women

Saved by men

The picture and graph above can be used to see the differences infeatures between male and female characters in animation. One of myrespondent answered that the female characters look very cute, for example,
they have big eyes and long hair, but male characters are very strong because
they have muscle. While, another respondent answered that male characters35

usually save female characters, but the female characters support men
characters by encouraging them. The male characters often battle against rivals
to get a victory, and to save the heroines. The male heroes become stronger
when the female heroines are taken somewhere by their rivals, or when danger
is imminent for her. These are same as Japan. In my opinion, male heroes want
to stand up for their heroines. Thus, male heroes fight with rivals to help their
heroines out of the difficulty. The characters’ lines often encourage not only the
anime characters but also many of the audience. Many people who watch anime
audiences and read comic feel encouraged by the characters’ lines, too. If I am
worried, nervous, sad, or irritated, reading or watching anime makes me feelbetter.
Anime creators are essential to make animations. I wondered as well if
the creators have gender issues or not. Anime creators are commonly known as
Animators. An animator is an artist who is in charge of creating the original
pictures and films. Please take a look at the graphs below. These two graphs,
represent Canada and in Japan.

36

(Mayorga, 2015)
First, in Canada in 2015, 83% of creators are male and only 17% of
creators are female . Yet in the past, there were even less female creators thanthey are today. However, in Japan, there are 60.5% of male creators, and 39.5%of female creators. As it is the case with Canada, there were also fewer female
anime creators in Japan in the past than there are today. Compared to Canadianfemale creators, Japanese female creators work for animation companies morethan Canadian women. I examined why there are more male anime creators are
more than female ones, but I could not find the answer.

I wonder if this isbecause there are many Japanese anime in Japan, also Japanese anime ispopular around the world, so Japanese women can get the opportunity to takepart in making anime. As mentioned above, Japanese anime is popular in theworld. Furthermore, foreigners who want to work for the animation companies
will probably increase in the near future.
37

Conclusion
From my research and interviews I found that there is a small gender
gap in Japanese animation. First of all, heroes are usually men in animations
and there are more male characters than female characters. Second of all,female characters look very cute, and male characters are very strong. Third ofall, in Canada, there are many more male anime creators than female, while inJapan the gap is not as large. I hope that the gender gap between the characterswill decrease and that the difference between the gender roles and the numberof female creators will increase. What should we do to work towards having nogender differences in animation in the future? I think that we should employ
female anime creators, and work together with no gender issues. We can makeit come true.

38Reference● Anime Rankingu (2016) Animetory, (February 22, 2017)
http://tama-yura.jp/animetory/● Humetsu, R. (March 27, 2010) Televi anime wo miteiru-hito wa 49.7%...40
sai to 50 sai ni matagaru okina sedai kakusa no Kabe (December 17th,2016) http://www.garbagenews.net/archives/1323303.html● Kidscreen ( 2013) 80 % of Canadian parents watch cartoon with their kids
weekly, ( December 17th, 2016)
http://kidscreen.com/tag/cartoon-network-canada/● Kirby, M. (2016) Studio Ghibli Explain The Importance of Gender inAnimation,(January 25, 2017) http://www.konbini.com/us/● Mayorga, E. (2015) Women in Animation Present Gender Disparity Date,(July 24th, 2016)
http://variety.com/2015/film/festivals/annecy-women-animation-marge-dean-kristy-scanlan-1201522706/● Tomita, H. (2016),Seichi Zyunnrei Map, (January 14th, 2017)
http://www.dip-net.co.jp/

39

Gender equality in the work place
Fuka Kitazawa
January 10, 2017
Nakamura High School
Nakamura International Course Thesis Paper Project40

Introduction
Having a good job is very important for everyone. People need to makemoney to have a successful life such as having a family, going on a trip, or
looking after children. Are you satisfied with the job system in Japan? Do you
have enough time to spend with your family? Do you think this system is fair for
everyone? Can you completely tell that there is no difference in the working
conditions between male and female employees at all? People in Canada andJapan have different views on how gender affects the way people think about
work and life balance.

Background
The regulation is that you have to spend eight hours in the office. When
this is over and the most important work of the day is done; whatever is left can
wait until the morning. This is the point when many workers should think about
heading for the door. However, millions of Japanese employees have a different
41view. If they start clearing their desks and go home in time for dinner, it is enoughto invite accusations of disloyalty. About 22% of Japanese people work morethan 49 hours a week (Ogura, 2017). Therefore, Japanese workers are said tobe hard working. Their days off are only 104 days which includes two-day
weekends, and 15 days for national holidays and five days for other paid leave.
As you can see in the graph below, the working culture in Canada seems morerelaxed than Japan, even though people also have some problems regarding
working, such as how hard it is to find a job. Regrettably, workers who can afford
to take holidays are very fortunate in Japan. Most full-time employees stay intheir offices and factories longer than the officially reported number of hours.

(Mc Carthy, 2016)

42

There are some interesting work culture facts about Canada which you
may not know. First is that there is a jeans day, or casual Fridays, where people
are allowed to dress down. This is a popular tradition in North America. Casual
Fridays is to celebrate the upcoming end of the work week. They also have a“brown bag meeting”, which is a casual meeting that occurs during the lunch
period. This type of meeting is referred to as a brown bag meeting because
participants bring their own lunches to the meeting. One more interesting thing isthat pay day is every two weeks. In most countries including in Japan, you get
paid once a month, usually towards the end or the very beginning of the month.
Speaking of pay day, the minimum wage in Canada depends on the province,
ranging from $10.50 (1050 yen) to $15 (1500 yen) per hour, however theminimum wage in japan rages is between 714 yen to 932 yen per hour
(Government of Canada, 2016). During my time in Canada, I had many friends
who were working. I still remember I was surprised to hear that their salary wasover $10 (1000 yen) for students because in Japan, 1000 yen for the students
per hour is quite high and rare. The minimum age to work in Canada depends on
the province where you want to work, ranging from 14-year-old to 16-year-old(Ontario Ministry of Labour, 2016).

43

The minimum age to work in Japan is 16-year-old but I guess mostpeople do not start working right after they turn 16 because there are many
schools that do not allow you to work until you graduate from their school. The
salary in japan is much cheaper than in Canada but the working time in Japan ismuch longer than in Canada, even longer than other countries as well.

(Kane, 2015)
The reason why I chose this topic is because I am interested in working
abroad in the future and for that reason, I want to know about how people work
abroad compared, to the working conditions in Japan. Before going to abroad, I
wanted to work in Japan but I have changed my mind through my many
experiences in Canada and I want to work in abroad now.

44

Supporting arguments
First of all, I am going to talk about the current job situation in both Japanand Canada. In Japan, most people have a job even if it is said that it takes
couple of years to get one, because the Japanese government makes sureeveryone has work. The current situation in Japan is the long working hours, as I
have already mentioned above. Even women work overtime as much as men do.
Japanese people are said to be inefficient but it is not the only cause of overtime.
Ogura (2017) gives a few reasons for this inefficiency. The first reason is
because meetings are held over and over again on the same subject. Meetingsin japan are not only for making decisions; they are deemed as opportunities forsharing information and understanding each other. Therefore, employees do nothave enough time to do creative work such as casting their ideas into shape andpreparing their materials, as they have to spend considerable hours attending
meetings and making arrangements. Secondly, managers are not able toconcentrate on management. Overtime work should be done based on overtime
order from the supervisor but in reality, many cases of overtime work arerecognized by the supervisor after subordinates have actually done the work.

45

Thirdly, there is the problem of people taking their job seriously. There are many
workers who set a high target for their work, or who have more interest in workthan leisure and tend to work long hours. On the other hand, I had interviewed a
few people in Canada about the current job situation in Canada and I have got
two major facts. The first idea from my research is that according to Business
Canada (2016), people cannot even find a job. Canada’s unemployment rate
dropped to 6.8%. The reason is that they do not want to employ people full-time.
If they have full-time employees, they would pay higher salary than they pay for
temporary staff. The second point from my research is the discrimination of
employment. According to CBC News (2009), there is discrimination between
Canadian and people from other countries even though Canada is an immigrantnation and approximately 20% of people who lives in Canada are immigrants.
For example, job applicants with non-English-sounding names. For instance,
Chinese, Pakistani or Indian, have less of a chance of getting interviews than
Canadian. When you apply for a job, if your name is not English-sounding, whichmeans the person looking for candidates can recognize if you are from Canada
or not, unfortunately, their resume is not even read. The study found Canadians
and landed immigrants with names such as “Jill Wilson” or “John Martin” are46

40% more likely to be offered an interview than someone with a name like “SanaKhan” or “Lei Li”, given an identical resume. Applicants with mixed name such as“Vivian Zhang” had a 20% better chance to land an interview than job-seekers
with non-English names, but still less than the English-only names. I think that
there should be no discrimination before employees look at immigrants’ job
applicants (CBC News, 2009).
Second of all, I am going to talk about after childbirth. Most Japanesewomen quit their job after childbirth to take care of their child and become house
wives. One of the reason is work schedules in Japan are not flexible, therefore,
some women have to quit their jobs even though they do not wish to do so. In
Canada, I have never seen my friends’ mothers who do not work. Most women in
Canada do not quit their jobs because work schedules in Canada can be flexible(Zhu, 2011). Also I found out through my time in Canada, that the quality ofhousework is different between Japan and Canada, and it may affects thedecision whether or not women become housewives or get back to work. In
Canada, there is not that much house chores because most families have
dishwasher so what they have to do is just to put the dishes into the machine.
Also every family has washing machines with dryers so they do not need to hang47

every single clothes outside to dry them. My mother in Japan does not work
even though I am in high school and my siblings have also grown up toelementary students. She is still busy with house chores because she needs todo everything by hand such as washing the dishes, hanging clothes andeverything. I have heard my mother saying that if she did not have to hang
clothes like abroad, she would be free to do other things. For Canadian people,
depending on the machine is not only the reason why they can go back work
even after childbirth but still it helps them a lot and also they are more effective
than Japanese people.
The third and final points that I found out from my interview is that men
do not care about work differences as much as women do. Women who work
full-time still earn 73.5 cents for every dollar men make. On average, women in
Canada earn $8,000 less than men which is double the global average of $4,000.
It is even worse for indigenous and minority women (The Global and Mail, 2016).
Regarding my question “do you think of women and man work differently?” somemale participants’ answers were “kind of” or “yes, it is in some way”. It seemedthat they did not really care about the gender gap because it does not affectthem. On the other hand, some female participants’ answers were “There are48

still a lot more men in senior leadership roles compared to women”. They
seemed to be more concerned because this is unfair for women. Men can getbetter salaries than women but I think that men should understand more about
gender gap between men and women’s job opportunities and salaries because
women do not think it is fair.
Conclusion
As you can see from my research, people in Canada and people inJapan have different ideas about the view on how gender gap affects the way
people think about work and life balance. Also, in Japan and in Canada, theyboth have their own problems and situations which are not good for workers
such as overtime work and even not getting paid enough for that overtime. In
addition, women in each country have their own opinions about after childbirthdepending on their family situation. Last, women and men work differently. No
one tries to understand why women do not have an equal salary with men. In my
opinion, therefore, what the women can do is to choose a company which has agood support for the women who work for them.

49References

Business Canada (2016), Canada’s Unemployment Rate Drops To 6.8%,
But No Net New Jobs Created (August 7th, 2017),
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/07/08/unemployment-canada-june-2016_
n_10882806.html

CBC News (2009), Job applicants with foreign names have lesser chancefor interviews: UBC study (May 20th, 2009),
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/job-applicants-with-foreignnames-have-lesser-chance-for-interviews-ubc-study-1.780909

Government of Canada (2016), Current And Forthcoming Minimum Hourly
Wage Rates For Experienced Adult Workers in Canada, (August 26th, 2016),
http://srv116.services.gc.ca/dimt-wid/sm-mw/rpt1.aspx

Kane, L. (2015), The minimum wage around the world, (May 6 th, 2015),
http://www.businessinsider.com/minimum-wage-around-the-world-2015-5

McCarthy, N. (2016), Where The World’s Millennials Work The Longest
Hours (May 25th, 2016),
https://www.statista.com/chart/4906/where-do-millennials-work-the-longest-

50

hour/


Ogura, K. (2017) Overtime Work in Japan –No Easy Way to Reduce
Working Hours, The Yomiuri Shimbun (2017),
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/adv/wol/dy/opinion/society_120206.html

Ontario Ministry of Labour (2016), In the Workplace: FAQs, (December2016), https://www.labour.gov.on.ca/english/hs/faqs/workplace.php



The Global and Mail (2016), Women still earning less money than men
despite gains in education: study (March 6th, 2016),
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/women-still-earning-less-mo
ney-than-men-despite-gains-in-education-study/article29044130/

Zhu (2011), 7 Canadian Working Culture Facts You May Not Know (July 27 th,2017), http://correresmidestino.com/7-work-culture-facts/

51

Gender and tourism in Australia and Japan
Yuuka Nakano
Nakamura High School
Nakamura International course
Thesis Paper project52

Introduction
Have you been to other countries? Would you like to go to other countries? Is
this for the learning of languages, travel, or work? If it is for travel, you mightwant to go to see a travel consultant for making the plans, as well as get
airplanes tickets. During that time, would you like to talk with a male travel
consultant, or would you like to talk with a female travel consultant? Somepeople think that there are more women working as travel consultants in both
Japan and Australia. In this essay I will explore how men and women are viewed
in the travel industry. I will look at the gender ratio of travel consultants, discuss
the different roles at work given to women and men, explain what gendercustomers seem to prefer travel consultant to be, and consider how genderaffects who has as high salary and high position.

BackgroundI have chosen to research about gender and tourism because I’m interested inother countries and their cultures. Travel agencies and travel consultants have tohave a good knowledge of both of these to sell tour planning to customers. They
should be able to talk about the good points of famous places and should also53

think about which countries or which plans are matching their customers’ needs.
When I was thinking about this task, I thought I would like to learn more aboutother countries culture and life style. I chose this topic and I tried to relate it togender issue within tourism.
A point I would like to discuss is about the benefits of tours to other countries ortours to my own country. To be honest, I haven’t been to other countries except
Australia, where I was an exchange student. I don’t know much about othercountries’ culture and famous places and I want to know more about Japan aswell. In Australia, my friends and my host family sometimes asked me about
Japan but I could not explain much about it even though it is my home country. I
would like to find out more about Japan first, and then I would like to tellforeigners the good points about Japan and Japanese culture.
Next, I would like to explain about what does the job of a travel consultant entails.
You may already know what they do. Basically, travel agents and travel
consultants have the same job. The following table gives you details about thedaily tasks of a travel consultant in Australia and Japan (Seek Learning, 2017).

54

~Daily tasks of a travel consultant~Contact with clients, over the phone orAdvise about the options for the suitableemail to discuss their travel(domestic or international destinations,requirements.

tours, accommodation, transport, insurance
and fares.)Prepare customised tour plans to suit

Make and confirm bookings, often via athe clients’ preferences and budget.

Global Distribution System (computerised
reservation system).

Issue tickets or relevant documents.

Provide up to date advice on travel
regulations including visa and medical
requirements, baggage limits, safety andlocal customs.

Modify existing bookings to suit a

Research destinations and keeping up tochange in clients’ circumstances.

date with travel industry news.

Take part in ongoing training with otherteam members and management.
55

As you can see, Travel consultants have many different tasks and according to
Seek Learning (2017), I found that both in Australia and Japan, Travel consultant
are doing the same tasks.

Argument
During my period abroad I interviewed four travel consultants from four different
travel companies in Australia. At the first company, there were three female
employees and no male employees. At the second company, there were threefemale employees and one male employee. At the third company, there were
five female employees and two male employees. At the last company, there
were ten female employees and six male employees.
1st company

2nd company

3rd company

4th company

Female

3

3

5

10

Male

0

1

2

6

100%

75%

71%

62.5%

Percentage offemale employees
Table 1. Number of employees at the Australian companies that I interviewed.

As you can see from table 1 there were far more female employees at the56

businesses that I interviewed. In Japan, I also interviewed four travel consultantsfrom four different travel companies. At the first company, there were four female
employees and one male employee. At the second company, there were four
female employees and two male employees. At the third company, there were
six female employees and two male employees. At the last company, there were
five female employees and three male employees.
1st company

2nd company

3rd company

4th company

Female

4

4

6

5

Male

1

2

2

3

80%

66.4%

75%

62.5%

Percentage offemale employees
Table 2. Number of employees at the Japanese companies that I interviewed.

As you can see from the results of my interviews (see tables 1 and 2) there are ahigher percentage of female employees working at travel companies in both
Australia and Japan. I think this reason may have an effect on the role of womenand men at work.
Now I am going to look at what is the role of women and men at their workplace.
At the companies that I interviewed, all of the women worked as travel57

consultants but half of the men said they were the business owner. I believe this
could be because men are more likely to be promoted to the top of the company.
In Japan, I think there is a similar situation. This may be linked to the difference
between who has a high salary and a high position. I think that most people
imagine that men should get a high salary and high position. This could be
because, until recently, Japanese men have been the ones working and women
stayed in the house as a housewife. That is the reason why I think men are more
likely to be promoted to top job of a company.
Next, let’s look at what gender customers prefer for their travel consultant. Out of
the four travel consultants I interviewed, three responded that they don’t thinkthat customers have any preference between male or female travel consultants.
However, one respondent answered that they think that both male and female
customers would prefer to have a female travel consultant. The reason that theygave for this answer was that they think women are friendlier and moreorganised. Although, this may be because this respondent worked at the travelcompany that only has female employees.

58Lastly, I am going to look at whom, between men or women have a high salaryand position. One of the interviewees answered that men have higher salaries
despite having the same position. Another interviewee said that women and men
get paid the same salary for the same position. So I could not get any clear
answers from this interview. It may be because talking about their salary is adifficult topic for most people. I thought this topic could be uncomfortable;
therefore I researched about who has a high salary and position in Australia on
the internet. Unfortunately, I only could get the average salary for travel
consultants, and I could not get clear details about the travel consultants as well.
However, according to Workplace Gender Equality Agency (2016) in Australia
men get higher salaries and higher positions. Workplace Gender Equality
Agency (2016) displayed that there is a lack of women in high positions, and alack of part-time or flexible high positions for them. Women are more likely thanmen to work part-time or flexibly because they still undertake most of society’s
unpaid caring work and may find it difficult to access high positions. So I think59

travel consultants are likely to be in the same position as other women inAustralia.

(Nohara, 2015)
With regards to Japan, I also could not get clear details about who has a higher
salary and higher position for the travel consultants. So I searched about who
has higher salaries and higher positions in Japan in general. While theemployment rate of women age between 15 to 64 has gone up to a record 65.4
percent (82.3 percent for men), full time female workers on average still earn
about 30 percent less than males (Workplace Gender Equality Agency, 2016).
Although women have equal skills and experience, they are paid less than men
who do the same job. The pay gap is the third widest among members of theOrganization for Economic Co-operation and Development (Workplace Gender
Equality Agency, 2016). From the OECD data, it seems that men, in Japan and60

Australia, get higher salaries and higher positions than women. Therefore, I
might be able to say that it may be the same for travel consultants.

Conclusion
As you can see from my essay, there are more women working as travel
consultants in Japan and Australia. Female employees are more likely to work
as travel consultants, while male employees are more likely to work as businessowners. So I think that is why we usually mostly see female employees at thetravel companies. Furthermore, I think that most people do not care whether
their travel consultant is male or female, so I could not view this as gender
discrimination for this issue. However, with regards to salary and position in thecompanies, men are more likely to than women get a higher salary and higher
position. In both of Australia and Japan, I have found similar results from myinterviews and research. Nowadays women try to get more equality regardingsalary and positions, even though men are more likely to get a higher salary andhigher position. I hope that the government and travel companies will take theopportunity to change so that women can have a better chance to receive
equality at work.

61

References

Nohara, Y. (2015) A pay gap persists as even more Japanese women join
(Nob 20, 2015) ‘women are taking jobs in low paying, labor-intensive sectors’
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artivcles/2015-11-19/pay-gap-persists-aseven-more-japanese-women-join-the-workforce

Seek Learning (2017) ’Travel Agent job description’ (February 06, 2017)https://www.seeklearning.com.au/industries/travel/travel-agent/job-descriptionWorkplace Gender Equality Agency (2016) Workplace gender equality
Australian government ‘international gender equality statistics’ (February 06,
2017)
https://www.wgea.gov.au/sittes/default/files/20160428_International_gender_eauality_statistics_factsheet.pdf

62Gender gap of flight attendants in Japanand Canada
Chihana Haga
January 22, 2017
Nakamura High School
Nakamura International Course Thesis Paper

63

Introduction
I studied abroad for almost a year in United States of America. I wanted to
study native English and American culture, such as English phrases that I
cannot learn from English textbooks and cultural differences between Japan andAmerica. During the time that I studied abroad, I interviewed some people about
gender discrimination between men and women. In addition, I asked them about
their thoughts about flight attendants. I found interesting facts about gender
discrimination between men and women and about flight attendants.
Have you ever seen male flight attendant? Some people say not really.
Do you know why? In Japan, many people believe that most flight attendants arefemale. Many people prefer female flight attendants for many different reasons;however those reasons might not be what you expect.
Background

The reason why I chose this topic was because when I thought aboutflight attendants I wondered why most of flight attendants are women. I wanted64

to know if there are differences between female and male flight attendants. Also,
since my childhood, I have wanted to be a flight attendant.
The reason why I want to be flight attendant is I would really like to visit
many different countries. I thought that if I become a flight attendant, I can go to
many countries, and get money at the same time. On the other hand, I think thisjob is very hard and I will need stamina. I think it is a challenging job.
Flight attendants have many different jobs. There are two main jobs. First,
they provide a service to customers, so that people can enjoy comfortable air
travel and they sometimes sell beverages, meals, and snacks. They take care ofpassengers’ needs, particularly those with special requirements. In addition,
flight attendants try to make flights comfortable and stress free for passengers.
For example, they serve the food to passenger when it is time to eat and theyalso serve beverages. If you need help during your time in the airplane, they canhelp you no matter when it is, because that is their job. Second, flight attendants
work towards the preservation of the airplane. Flight attendants are responsible
for the life of passengers; therefore they have to prepare for dangerous things,
such as airplane crash, emergency landing or hijacking.

65

As you know, flight attendants’ most important job is to keep passengers’safe. As a result, flight attendants do emergency and rescue training every year
(Collegegrad, 2017). Furthermore, they are not allowed to work on the plane ifthey do not pass this training test. Airlines provide initial training, ranging fromthree to six weeks before flight attendants provide services to passengers. The
training usually takes place at the airline’s flight training center. Beginners learn
emergency procedures such as how to evacuate from an airplane, operating
emergency equipment, and administering first aid. At the end of the training,
students can practice how to serve passengers. They must complete the training
to keep their job with the airline. Flight attendants do a wonderful job, but being aflight attendant is hard work and needs requires. It is different from other jobs
because flight attendants do not only provide a service but also they are
responsible for the security of other people.
Now let’s look at the Gender gap which is the differences between womenand men, especially as reflected in social, political, intellectual, cultural, or
economic attainments or attitudes (Dictionary, 2015). The Global Gender Gap
Report from the World Economic Forum (2017) quantifies the consequence ofgender disparities and tracks their progress over time, with a specific focus on66

the relative gaps between women and men. To sum up, I looked at thedifference between man and woman with regards to work.
In the ranking of gender gap Japan is 111 th. On the other hand, America
is 45th, and the lowest country is Yemen at 144 th place which is a Middle East
country. Japan has more discrimination between men and women then America(World Economic Forum, 2017). In my opinion, Japan has a lot of discrimination
between men and women. Japanese people have stereotypes that flightattendant is a woman's job. Thereby, there are many female flight attendants inJapanese airlines.

Rank

Country

Score

1

Iceland0.874

45

United States

0.722

111

Japan

0.66

144

Yemen

0.516

The highest possible score is 1 (equality) and the lowest possible score is 0 (inequality)(World Economic Forum, 2017)67

Main Arguments
First of all, I am going to tell you about why most flight attendants arefemale. In my opinion, many people have stereotypes about flight attendants.
For example, they think that flight attendants should be female. People think that
it is easier to talk with women and they are good at being flexible withpassengers. Also, some people prefer female flight attendants because most offlight attendants have a good figure and are beautiful.
During my study abroad period in United States of America, I interviewed
some people about why most of flight attendants are female, and here are someof their answers: A 17year-old girl told me that flight attendant is a woman's job,on the other hand, a 31 year-old woman who is a flight attendant with Delta
airline told me that from her experience male flight attendants are either popularor unpopular. Also a 28 year-old woman told me that she think that the majorityof flight attendants are female, and maybe it is because of the lifestyle and thework being flexible. In addition a 16 year-old girl told me that flight attendants so
do a wonderful job.
Now I would like to look at the gender ratio of flight attendants. However, I
found that there are many people working as flight attendants who are male.

68

Although I did not find any data about the ratio of about female flight attendants
and male flight attendants. So I instead with use this graph made fromquestionnaires filled in by passengers who receive service from flight attendants.

Flight attendant
Don't remember

0.80%

Both of them
From male only

34.80%
0.30%

From female only

64%
0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

As you can see from the data, the majority of flight attendant is woman.
There are two reasons why most of flight attendants are female. First of all, it isstrongly related to history of airlines. When the airlines were established, the firstflight attendants were nurses. Then after a while, nurses were not on duty and it
was uncommon that male nurses to be on duty as a flight attendants. In old
times, many people had never had the opportunity to go on an airplane andeveryone was scared when they were on an airplane. Each airplane companies
thought that female attendants could calm passengers down better than maleattendants, because women are thought of as being supportive. This is one of
the reasons why most of flight attendants are mostly female. Second of all, there
are many women who want to be flight attendants in Japan. Of course there are69

men who want to be flight attendants too. It is just that there are no male flightattendants in Japanese airline. Then you may ask where do men who want to beflight attendant work. I found an interesting fact that many men who want to beflight attendant are working for Middle Eastern airlines. Japanese Airline
Corporation does not accept men who want to be flight attendants. Strictly
speaking, they accepts male employee but not as a flight attendants even if
those man want to be flight attendants. I searched why they do not accept maleas a flight attendant, but I could not find any information about this. Based onthese factors, we can see that a lot of male who want to be flight attendant start
work with Middle Eastern airlines, which accept a lot of male as flight attendants.
Then why do Middle Eastern airlines accept male employees as flight attendants.
The Middle East has serious gender discrimination. For that reason middle
eastern airlines accepts a lot of male as flight attendants without difference
between male and female is in order to improve gender discrimination. Now let's
have a look at the Gender Gap Index of Middle East to see which Middle Eastern
airline has a base airport in Middle East. As you can see from the graph, Middle
East has a low rank in the gender gap index (World Economic Forum, 2017). In
my opinion, Middle East has a low rank it might be because of their culture. I

70heard that in the Middle East schools separate girls and boys. Also most of
women who are citizen of Middle East have to wear a burqa (or similar) which
covers everything except eyes for hiding their face from men. From thisinformation I think that Middle East has discrimination between men and women.
Rank

Country

Score

119

United Arab Emirates

0.646

122

Qatar

0.645

130

Turkey0.624

141

Iran, Islamic Rep.

0.580
(World Economic Forum, 2017)Conclusion
In conclusion, from my research and from the interviews that I conducted I
found that the majority of flight attendants in Japan are female. This could why
many Japanese people consider flight attendant to be woman’s job. Furthermore,
a lot of people prefer female flight attendants for various reasons. I think that themain reason is there is stereotype that flight attendant is a woman’s job. So it ishard to work as a flight attendant. In my opinion, Japanese airline companies
should accept men who want to be flight attendant for reduce discrimination71

between women and men. Then society can reduce discrimination andstereotype that women and man. Furthermore Japanese gender gap ranking will
increase and it should not hard to work for male flight attendant.
From these reasons if in the future society’s opinion of this job change, it will
be easier for men to work as a flight attendant and also it can give good effect toother job which many people think that is women’s job. People can change theirstereotypes. I think it is important that to make good environment which is men
and women can work together without gender discrimination.

ReferencesCollegegrad (2017) Flight attendants Career, Salary and Education
Information (February 20, 2017)https://collegegrad.com/careers/flight-attendants

Dictionary.com (2015) gender gap (September 25, 2011)
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/gender-gap?&o=100074&s=t



World Economic Forum (2017) The Global Gender Gap Report 2016
(February 20, 2017)
http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2016/rankings/

72

Differences of Family Gender Gap between
Japan and New Zealand

Yuka Fujiwara
February 20, 2017
Nakamura High School
Nakamura International Course Thesis Paper

73

Introduction
Do you think women should do chores and men should work outside thehome? Do you think women cannot get jobs as well as men can? In Japan,
many people think mothers should be in the house and fathers should be
earning money for their family. On the other hand, people in other countries like
America, Canada, England, and New Zealand may not think like this. For mystudy abroad program, I went to New Zealand and I interviewed a few people
there. In this thesis, using my research, I will write about the differences between
families in Japan and New Zealand.

Background
The reason why I chose my topic is when I had to choose a topic, I really
did not know what I wanted to do, so I asked my teacher and she told me that“Family” is the easiest topic to understand and write a report on. The other girls
in my class were writing about future jobs that they want to do, but when I was
thinking about the gender issues of the job I want to do, I could not find any
differences, so it was hard for me. However I could find differences between
mothers and fathers because generally speaking, in Japan, women do74housework and men work outside the home and in my family’s case, my parents
are both working but mostly my mother does chores, cook three meals and clean
our house while my father is working outside the house. I started wondering
whether most Japanese families are like mine and how about other houses incountries other than Japan. For these reasons, I decided to research and write
about the gender gap that affects family life. This is the reason why I decided I
wrote about this topic.

Supporting Arguments
Firstly, I am going to talk about the gap between women and men. Everycountry has a gap between women and men. Some of them have a big gap andsome of them have a small one. However there is a huge inequality gap between
men and women in Japan. I have known since I was little about the gap between
women and men and I do not know how I knew about it but I think as I grew up, I
knew it naturally, which is bad because when people know something naturally, itmeans it is a common thing. In Japan, it is a common to have a gap between
women and man. For example, at work, mostly women get paid less than men
which is called Pay Gap. As you can see the graph below (McCarthy, 2016),

75

Japan and Korea have a higher percent than other countries but New Zealand isin the lowest place.

In Japan, if women get pregnant, they will most likely leave their job eventually
because many people think women who get pregnant cannot work as well as
men. If women get pregnant, their stomach will get bigger day by day and it willaffect their work. They cannot move faster than before get pregnant and people
around them have to much more work than usual for them. According to OECD
(Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) outlook (2013), in
Japan, the employment rate of women between the ages of 25-54 years old is69.2% and it is 24th out of 34 countries who are members of OECD. The OECD’smember states are regarded as developed countries. However, men’s76employment rate is 91.5% and it is 2 nd out of 34 countries. This shows that thelower employment rate of women is not because of economic problems as theunemployment rate of men is very low. One reason that could contribute to the
gap in employment rate between men and women is that as OECD (2013) says,
after graduating from school, most women get a job but about 60% women leave
their jobs after they have a baby. Similarly in New Zealand, from my interviews,
all the participants said that they thought men get paid more than women.
However during my study abroad, I saw many women were working the same as
men, so I think New Zealand may have a gender gap, but it may be lower thanJapan does.
Ranking

CountryScore

9 / 144

New Zealand

0.781

111 /144

Japan

0.66

Here is the Global Gender Gap Index from OECD (2013) which the highest
possible score is 1 (equality) and the lowest possible score is 0 (inequality). As
you can see, New Zealand has a high score and Japan has low score. Out of
144 countries, Japan has a bigger gap between female and male than manyother counties.
77Secondly, let us move onto the main purpose of my thesis, which isabout the family life’s gender gap. As you can see in the introduction, in Japan,
most people think that mothers should take care of their children and fathers
should work outside the house. I often hear that being a mother is really hard
work especially taking care of really young children. Babies cry every night andmany children like their mother more than their father, so mother have to holdthem up until they stop crying. After a while, babies start crying over and overagain, so I often hear that mother cannot sleep when their children are young. In
Japan, I think that most mothers get less sleep than fathers. As I have pointed
out before, this is because mothers in Japan tend to look after their children andthey have to do the washing, cook every meal, and clean the house. However
during my time in New Zealand with my host family, this was not the case. My
host mother and father tend to look after their children together and also they doshare chores. I thought other countries would have been different from Japanand we should know how other countries have different roles in the house78

between fathers and mothers. I interviewed four people in New Zealand.
Everyone said that “House work should be shared” and they all said “Childcare
is father and mother’s job”. During my study abroad, my host mother and father
were sharing jobs and taking care of their children. In my host house, they had
two rules about sharing house jobs. First rule was my host mother cooks dinneron Monday, Wednesday, Friday and my host father cooks dinner on Tuesday,Thursday and Saturday and on Sunday, they cook dinner together. I think it is apretty good idea to make that kind of rules because if mothers cook dinner every
day, they might get stressed from it but if fathers help mothers, they do not getstress because they are cooking dinner together. The other rule was, on my hostmother’s working day; she drove her children to the school and picked them up
on the way home. On my host father’s working day, he did the same things as
his wife, so when my host mother did not have work, she did not have to wakeup to take her children to the school. Both parents could sleep until the time theywanted to wake up. If I get married with someone and have a family, I would liketo make those rules. However I realized maybe Japanese people are not able todo the same as New Zealand people do because in Japan, most fathers areworking outside the house and they get home late at night. In New Zealand,79most of mothers have a job as well as fathers do, as I said before, and both ofthem finish working around 4:30 ~ 5:30. If you go to New Zealand, you can seethat almost every shop is closed at 5:00 p.m. and everyone goes home. This way,
people have time to spend with their family and do house works. There is nodifference in the finishing working time between men and women but in Japan’scase, you can see that most shops are opened until late and men have to work
harder because they are believed to be stronger than women. Most fathers gethome really late and it means that mothers have to do all the chores, cook dinnerfor everyone and look after their children. Mothers get stressed, because they
are doing everything. I wondered why in New Zealand, the women can work thesame as the men do. I think it may be because they are doing Gender Equality
Policy and New Zealand develops women’s social advancement (Casey et al,2010). Gender equality is the notion that all men and women should receive
equal treatment in all aspects and should not be discriminated based on theirgender. Even though, there is still have a gap, I think we should copy New
Zealand and other countries and try to have no gap between male and female.
Thirdly, these days, the number of people in Japan who thinks that father
should look after their children as well as their mother is increasing, little by little.

80

I often see fathers who are taking care of their children in the same as mothers
and they called “Ikumen”. Many people say that it is a good thing that the men
are doing childcare. I think it is really good thing too because it is not only themothers job to take care of children. If the news about “Ikumen” is on TV, many
people would get to know more about it and Japanese thinking might bechanged, step by step. In addition, I think that is if men do the jobs which most ofJapanese people would say it is women’s, women could do the job which
Japanese people would say it is men’s easily and the women would get paid orwork the same as the men do. Eventually, there will be no gap between men andwomen.

In conclusion, we know there is a gap between women and men all over
the world. It does not matter if it is big or small but in Japan, we still have a huge
gap. In the future, I would like to have the same work opportunities and salary as
men. I think we can have a little gap between men and women because we have81

different abilities and men are thought to be stronger physically than women.
However if the gap is way too big, women cannot earn money more than men
forever. Women cannot get a higher position than men. It does not mean men
should get a lower position the women. We should live together equality.

References
・Casey, C., Skibnes, R., and Pringle, J., K. (2010) “Gender Equality andCorporate Governance: Policy Strategies in Norway and New Zealand” (18February 2010)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0432.2010.00514.x/full・OECD (2013) “Protecting jobs, enhancing flexibility: A new look at employment
protection legislation”, in OECD Employment Outlook 2013, OECD Publishing
http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/empl_outlook-2013-6-en
・McCarthy, Niall (2016) “The Gender Pay Gap in Developed Nations Visualized”,
Statista (January,26,2016)
https://www.statista.com/chart/4279/the-gender-pay-gap-in-developed-nations-v
isualised/82

Volunteering in Portland, U.S.A
Yuki Mori
January 25, 2017
Nakamura High School
Nakamura International Course Thesis Paper

83Introduction
Most people consider volunteering as a good thing. In Japan, how many
people do you think participate in it? There is almost no one who volunteers
around me in Japan. However, things are different in United States of America.
There were many people who volunteered around me when I was staying in
U.S.A. In this essay, I am going to talk about volunteering, my experience inPortland, U.S. and gender.

BackgroundOne day I saw on a TV program about volunteering during the Ebola
virus crises. I was amazed by the people who helped preventing the virus
because those people could be infected, too. I was very impressed. That is why I
have decided that my topic would be volunteering.
Volunteers are defined as people who do unpaid work (except for
expenses) through or for an organization (Free dictionary, 2017). I joined acommunity, managed by Christian people which was called International
84

Christian Fellowship, (ICF). This organization offers dinner to international
students and gives the opportunity to learn about Christianity. I learned manythings about the bible through ICF.
In the United States of America, about 62 million people volunteer
through an organization at least once between September 2014 and September
2015. Although, the volunteer rate declined by 0.4 percentage point to 24.9
percent for the year ending in September 2015, according to the U.S. (Economic
News Release, 2016). In Japan, the number of people who volunteer is about 30
million in 2014 (Zenkoku, 2014). This is only half of the people who volunteeredin the U.S.A. in 2014. American people, I think, have their own time, such as
spending time with their families or do their hobby. On the other hand, Japanesepeople are very busy. They do not have enough time to do their hobby. Moreover,in Japan, we do not see people who are in need each day. Nevertheless, I thinkthat Japanese people should know about more about volunteering.
In the United States, the number of women who volunteered were 27.8
percent in 2014, and was about 28.3 percent in the previous year. The volunteer
rate for men has remained stable at 21.8 percent for the year ending in
September 2015. Across all age groups, educational levels, and other major85demographic characteristics, women continued to volunteer at a higher rate thanmen (Economic News Release, 2016). In Japan, the number of the malevolunteer is about 13 million, female is 16 million (Jissen, 2011). Therefore, it
seems that women do more volunteer than men do in both of countries. I thinkthat it may be because men have more responsibilities with their jobs and they
do not have enough time to volunteer.
In the U.S. 18.4 percent volunteer of 35- to 44-year-olds and teenagers
have a relatively higher volunteer rate, at 26.4 percent (Economic News Release,2016). For example, while in the U.S, I had a friend called Ken, who volunteeredin South America since he could speak Spanish. He told me that work there wasfun. He played soccer with orphans and taught them how to fold a bird by
Origami. However, he looked stressed out to me. In South America, the public
peace is not good that is why he was very careful about the environment aroundhim. In Japan, however, the highest portion of people who volunteer are 40-44
years old at 35.6%. On the other hand, the lowest portion is the age group of
25-29 at 16.5% (Jissen, 2011). I think this is because that people who are inages between 25-29 get married and have a young child who they have to takecare of.

86

In the U.S, 29.9 percent people who are married volunteered in 2015,
compared to only 19.9 percent of those who had never married and those withother marital statuses at 20.2 percent. In 2015, parents with children under age
18 were again more likely to volunteer then people without children, with 31.3
percent versus 22.6 percent (Economic News Release, 2016). In Japan, about
70% of people who volunteering are married (Jissen, 2011). I think this isbecause of that, married people have opportunities to think about others since
they have their own families.
Argument
I asked John to be interviewed for my research on volunteering. John isthe person who is the leader of ICF. According to his answers, in America, many
people enjoy volunteering. He does volunteering for many international students
by taking care of them, including me, since he knows how difficult it is to staysomewhere where it is hard to get used to. He lived in Japan for 3 years then herealized how difficult it is to live in a country where he never lived before. Afterliving in Japan, he and his wife started helping international students. This is all
the data from the interview that I could analyze. Therefore, I am now going totalk about ICF and I will talk about what I did when I took part in it. The ICF is an87

organization whose leader is John. He lives close to where my host family lives.
The ICF meeting started 6:30 p.m. every Friday. There were many international
students, and we had dinner and learned about bible together.
To be honest, it was very hard for me to keep going to ICF until I got
used to English because we talked in English and learned bible in English. That
is why I was very disappointed when I did not understand English. I barely spoke
English at the time. As you can guess, it was kind of torture when I had aconversation with more than two people who spoke English at the same time.
The more they talked, the more they talked fast and I felt lonely.
I had one more problem. It was when we learned about bible. We
read the bible out loud. I was terrible at reading out loud. Every time I read, I felt
awkward and was sure of that they would not understand my English without
their bible. At least they saw what I read, so they could understand. Moreover, I
did not understand what I was reading about. I was reading the bible. That was it.
Therefore I did not understand what my friends and posters were talking about. It
was also very awkward. Last thing is that, we prayed together. When I realizedthat preaching time was finishing in a minute, I could not stop sighing because I
did not like praying at the same time as others. I did not know how to pray since I

88

am Japanese. I had never prayed until I came to Portland.
During the month of May, An Egyptian girl came to ICF. She was thesame age as me. There were no people who were high school students in ICF
but I was. So I was very excited to talk with her. We became friends straightaway. I was laughing all day long on that day. Sometimes, I did not understandwhat she said but I did not care about it somehow. I think that because it was
May, and I finally got used to English. Further, she was always sweet andsincere. She was very patient with me.
In summer, I had a chance to try wind surfing through the ICF. I waswondering if I would be able to stay long on the board because of my balanceability, but I decided to go wind surfing anyway. I had a great experience overthere. I think I will not get a chance to try wind surfing in Japan. Unfortunately, I
was the only one to need to be rescued by a life saver. It was very embarrassing.
One week later, we had a Canada trip for four days. I was very nervous
actually because I still did not have the confidence about my English ability. I
was thinking that I would become embarrassed. Contrary to my expectation, theCanada trip became my best memory. I enjoyed talking with my friends until 2:30
a.m. on the first day. We had sightseeing. We also went to hike which was89horrible. We kept going up some stairs or rocks for over one hour. Of course at
the end of hiking, we had a great view.

For me, I do not want to go hiking for awhile. On the last day, we went to an authentic Chinese food restaurant. One of
my Chinese friend ordered delicious food for us.
Since this Canada trip, my life in Portland was changed. Honestly, I did
not enjoy staying in America at all. I did not even try to have fun because I wasconcentrating on how to improve my English ability. Without having fun withlearning English, there is no way to improve it. I learned this important thing
through ICF.
Conclusion
When I was spending time with ICF, I noticed that people like tovolunteer in an area where they feel is needed and where they have some skills
or talent. I think that this make them feel rewarded when they help someone. In
general, I think men want to do something physical when they volunteer whereas women may like to work on making good relations. For example, John was a
track and field athlete, so he takes international students on hikes or wind surfing.
On the other hand, his wife, Yoriko gives advices the students who need it andtell them about the bible.

90There is a lot of variety of volunteering, like the ICF in the world.
ICF helped me very much while I was in Portland.

Volunteering is such a

wonderful thing. Volunteers do not work for money but people who are in need. I
would like to do some volunteering in the future.

References

Economic News Release (2016) Bureau of Labor Statistic (February 25,2016) https://www.bls.gov/news.release/volun.nr0.htm

Free dictionary (2017) dictionary (February 20, 2017)
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/volunteerJissen (2011) kihon de-ta, (February 8, 2017)https://www.nier.go.jp/jissen/book/h24/pdf/v_05.pdf

Shakyo (2014) Zenkoku volunteer katsudou jittai tyousa houkokusho(February 8, 2017)
http://www.shakyo.or.jp/research/20140808_09volunteer.pdf#search=%272014+%E3%83%9C%E3%83%A9%E3%83%B3%E3%83%86%E3%82%A3%E3%82%A2+%E7%B5%B1%E8%A8%88%27

91