United Nations

Economic and Social Council

E/CN.6/2018/NGO/103
Distr.: General
8 December 2017
Original: English

Commission on the Status of Women
Sixty-second session
12–23 March 2018
Follow-up to the Fourth World Conference on Women and to
the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly
entitled “Women 2000: gender equality, development andpeace for the twenty-first century”

Statement submitted by International Women’s Year Liaison
Group, a non-governmental organization in consultative status
with the Economic and Social Council *The Secretary-General has received the following statement, which is being
circulated in accordance with paragraphs 36 and 37 of Economic and Social Council
resolution 1996/31.

* The present statement is issued without formal editing.

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Statement
Few Things have changed since 1960
The latest statistics (2015) indicate that the agricultural population is in decline
in Japan. Of 2.16 million households engaged in agriculture, only 0.29 million
households (13.4 per cent) are classified as households whose major income is fromagriculture, 0.44 million households (20.4 per cent) are classified as engaged full time in agriculture. Of 3.4 million agricultural population, 1.75 million work as fulltime farmers, out of which only 0.75 million (42.7 per cent) are women.
The agricultural population peaked in 1960,30.2 per cent of the total population.
Between 1960s and 1970s, when the country experienced high economic growth,
women were essential actors in agriculture and made up more than 60 per cent of theagricultural population, but their role was invisible. They rarely owned land, theirlabour was underappreciated, and they hardly participated in management anddecision-making processes.
The Two Basic Laws of 1999 assume women are to bear double burden
After the Fourth World Conference at Beijing, the Japanese Government
established the Headquarters for Planning and Promotion of Policies Relating toWomen as the national coordinating machinery related to women. In 1977, theHeadquarters produced the first National Action Plan, promoting the welfare of rural
women in agriculture, forestry and fishing communities as one of its goals, andenacted the Basic Law for a Gender Equal Society. Unfortunately, the phrase
corresponding to gender equality in Japanese, i.e. men and women ’s jointparticipation in society, does not explicitly deny the existing gender roles whileinviting women to participate in workforce and decision-making, implicitly expecting
women to bear the double burden of work and family. Also enacted in 1999 was theBasic Law on Food, Agriculture and Rural Areas which promotes women ’s
participation in agricultural management and other activities.
We lament the dearth of evidence based policies
In 2001, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, pursuant to theFood and Agriculture Basic Law, conducted a survey of self-employed womenworking in agriculture and their spouses about the condition of rur al women anddesirable policies to improve these conditions. Since then, the Ministry has listed
policies encouraging women to take courses on management and new technologies,
and to conclude Family Management Agreements. Unfortunately, 2001 is the onlytime, the Ministry nor any other government agencies has engaged in a survey
relevant to rural women. We need properly conducted surveys and accurate gender
statistics, to plan and implement appropriate policies.
Family Management Agreements are no panacea. We aspire all women to beeconomically independent
Family Management Agreements project is often mentioned as an indispensable
element in empowering rural women. The Ministry started the project in the 1960s toencourage sons to succeed family farms. At that time, policy-makers assumed that anagreement, between the head of the family (father) and a succeeding son, defining
their roles, responsibilities and future arrangement in a written form, would help keep
young people from leaving family farms for urban jobs. In those days, it was often

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called a father-son agreement. It failed, and the decline of agricultural populationcontinued.
Then in the 1995, the program was revived. Its new target was women. Itpresupposes that the basic farming (and fishing) unit is the family, and that without
women’s active participation, the primary industry cannot continue to provide eventhe minimum food supply for the country. The new model differs from the old 1960smodel on two points:• parties are not confined to father and son, but includes women, and could beapplied between spouses; and• the content is not confined to an assignment of farming properties or stipend
and compensation for family members. It often includes agreed-upon
management policies, arrangements for accounting and other financial matters,(per diem, weekly, monthly or annual) compensations, working hours andholidays, and maternity and parental leaves (as employees), or rules for
distributing profits beyond fore-mentioned compensations (as co-owners).
This reflects new types of family relationships emerging in rural areas. But it
still expects family members to contribute according to their abilities to the familybusiness. The latest statistics shows that only 56,397 families out of about
0.44 million full-time households (12.8 per cent) or out of 2.16 million households(2.6 per cent) have concluded their Family Management Agreements in writing by
2016. It has been said that concluding family arrangements has been instrumental inempowering rural women, but the number is too small to be complacent.
Further survey shows that compensation for women as defined in thesearrangements is very small,0.6 to 1.2 million yen annually, which is far below thepoverty line, and that women are often obliged to use this income not for themselves
but for other family members. Even Income Tax Code Article 56 does not classify
compensation based on Family Management Agreements and from other family -runbusinesses as an individual’s income, an important point that Committee on theElimination of Discrimination against Women asked the Government to review in its
Concluding Observations in 2016.
We need a properly structured National Health Insurance System
Most people engaged in agriculture are covered by the National Health
Insurance. It does not award compensation for out-of-work and lost wages caused byinjuries and childbirth. This often forces women, not just rural women but also all
self-employed women, women working for family business or employed as part-time,
to shorten time necessary to recuperate from injuries and childbirth. Legal protection
for women such as maternity and parental leaves are confined to working women
employed as full-time workers and do not extend to rural women. This is an important
issue that should be dealt with to improve the condition of all women workers.
We fear that rural women are becoming invisible again in national policiesThe latest National Action Plan of 2015 does not treat rural women
independently but lumps them together with local community development andenvironment. It recognizes that women make up about 40 per cent of full -time
agricultural population but laments that their participation in management anddecision-making is still not significant. According to latest figures, there are 1,706
local agricultural committees, administrative agencies governing local agricultural

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land usages: 488 or 28.6 per cent of those are still composed of all male members,
and 2,671 or mere 8.1 per cent of committee members are women.
There are 660 local agricultural cooperatives and 4.6 million regular members:
21.1 per cent of regular members are women, an increase f 82 per cent since 1999,
and of 17,467 board members, only 1,305 or 7.5 per cent are women, an impressive
increase of 826 per cent since 1999. These numbers reflect the fact that the National
Action Plan and the fore-mentioned Ministry have successfully urged these entities
to include at least one women in their managerial ranks, and have encouraged womento participate in decision-making positions. As the result, we have seen notablechanges in this area but, it still is a long way to 203050.
There is a silver-lining, women are good at starting new things
To end with a hopeful observation, the Ministry of Agricultur e, Forestry andFisheries states that, statistically speaking, agricultural entities with women as board
members and managers tend to enjoy larger gross sales, greater operating profits, andimpressive annual increases in sales and profits. Although the number of rural women
who began their own businesses have not increased during the last decade, and almost
half of those entities gross less than 3 million yen annually, the Ministry encourages
women to realize that they have important roles to play in incre asing productivity ofagriculture, forestry and fisheries, and that they are the ones to lead the next
productivity wave.
In fact, the Ministry is proposing to subsidize entities with women inmanagement and entities processing produces, which are considered women’s job,and entities with women leaders and new feasible business plans for the fiscal year
2017, the budget is 100 million yen or less than 0.000035 per cent of the Ministry ’s
budget. We must not forget that almost all success projects are the ones which started
with their own efforts, women should thank the proposal and decide their priorities
themselves.
We share our experience with other women
We should not leave out our international cooperation efforts. Japan
International Cooperation Agency has been offering the training course entitledEmpowerment of Rural Women. Our goal is to share our experiences and humbly
learn from others so that no one will be left behind when we achieve gender equality.

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