Crossing the Disciplinary Divide: Gender and politics in Japan

Abstract

A plethora of studies in political representation have emphasized the importance of gender in legislative bodies in order to achieve gender equality and thus positively reflect the voices of men and women equally in the decision-making process. However, these studies have overshadowed the fact that not all women are willing to represent their gender or act as feminist parliamentarians. This begs a question; how should we turn these legislative bodies into gender agencies where everyone is represented equally? And what are the measurements that the legislative bodies should follow while recruiting women who have the potential to act for women. Although gender as a term includes men, women and sexual minorities, this paper is going to utilize the term to refer mainly to women’s political status in the legislative bodies. The paper suggests that for a better political representation for women we should shift the focus from the conventional paradigm of descriptive representation and gender equality into substantive representation and gender justice.

Keywords: Gender, Politics, Japan, Women’s political status