4 ms·

I can't help but feel like this is a strong misinterpretation of the circumstances. The author tries really hard to make this a woman's issue, but as far as I

by eska 8y ago

I can't help but feel like this is a strong misinterpretation of the circumstances. The author tries really hard to make this a woman's issue, but as far as I know the law doesn't lay out different rules for women specifically, just the less-earning spouses that take care of the children, so the same problems exist for husbands that stay at home. However, women universally tend to not marry "down" when it comes to finances, education, etc., while men do. They also tend to find men without a career to be unambitious, which is generally considered to be an unattractive trait in men for romantic purposes. This is true for poor countries rife with sexism, as well as for rich countries that treat women and men equally. (All of this has been covered by extensive sutdies) In Japan in particular young women tend to have high expectations of men, because their parents and grandparents had no financial issues during the economic bubble and their mothers and grandmothers did not have to work at all or much. Many Japanese women can't wait to marry in order to start a family and stop working; it's their life goal and they only consider their career to be temporary from the start. This even true for most women who graduate from elite universities in Japan (I saw a study about Tokyo university graduates mentioning this). So that's why in practice we're talking about mostly women here and I wouldn't blame men for that. The argument about the time spent on housework also sounds rather weird and insignificant to me, because it mentions a significant gap between men and women, but also mentions that Japanese spend less time on housework in general. 263mins = 4h23m a week is a number that I pull off without trouble as a single man working full-time without the least bit of help from a spouse. The article also doesn't mention whether this number is limited to families with children or the whole population. The part about bento boxes is just a meme. Women are not considered to be bad mothers if they don't create bento boxes that look like Pikachu and friends. There are legitimate issues for women working in Japan, some of which we have in other countries, some we don't, but I don't see any of them in this article. All I see is "less-earning spouses (usually women) get too many benefits, that's why the alternative of working isn't attractive enough". And instead of complaining about beautiful bento boxes, the author should draw attention to serious issues like the incredible lack of kindergarden spots and the like.

mikekchar 8y ago
Just to agree with you on the bentou boxes. I worked in a high school for 5 years and often ate lunch with the students. Never once did I see an overly cute benou box :-) My wife makes my bentou box, but at that time I made hers. It takes about 20 minutes to make in the morning, but you have to be organised. Japanese people also tend to have a large, cooked morning meal (which my wife now makes, but when I was working at the school I made for her). For me, I'd often be cooking for about an hour every morning (including both breakfast and lunch), which meant getting up at about 6. Japanese people bathe at night, which frees up a bit of time. I don't want to understate the difficulty that women have in the workplace in Japan. The breakfast and lunch are manageable, but then you have to do laundry (and if you have school kids, it's a big job in Japan). People hang their laundry outside, so it's a problem if you aren't there to get it if it rains. You have to be back in time to cook dinner for your kids, but you have responsibilities to stay late at work most days, etc, etc. Some of my female colleagues barely slept and it just wasn't healthy. Distributing the workload is not so hard, but it needs a cultural shift. It's slowly happening though. You may note that my wife cooks for me now and wonder why... I liked doing breakfast and lunch, but I think my wife prefers doing it herself (my bentous aren't very good, I'll admit). I suspect (but don't know) that she also feels better, as a woman, if she does that job. That's a strange idea in western culture, but perhaps it will sound more understandable if I say that I feel better, as a man, if I make a salary. Stupid and arbitrary, but culture is like that sometimes. It's hard to change and you need to go slowly.
- eska 8y ago
  Thank you for your input, mikekchar. Even if anecdotal, it mirrors my experiences and what I hear from Japanese acquaintances as well. I agree that the cultural shift might just take more time, but is already happening. I see parallels to earlier developments in the west.
rayiner 8y ago
> The author tries really hard to make this a woman's issue, but as far as I know the law doesn't lay out different rules for women specifically, just the less-earning spouses that take care of the children, so the same problems exist for husbands that stay at home. The article doesn't claim that the law is intentionally discriminatory. It says that the law disincentivizes women to work, which can be true even if that is not the intent of the law. Stricter voter ID requirements don't facially discriminate between different groups, but they still have the effect of suppressing voting by minority groups because of how they interact with other social factors. And the underlying claim is an uncontroversial one in economics: tax or welfare benefits that phase out with higher incomes disincentivize work. That's a generic truth about economics. It just happens to be a "woman's issue" in this context because (1) women happen to disproportionately have the lower paying jobs, because of gender norms; and (2) Abe's government is trying to get more women in the workforce to deal with Japan's crushing labor shortage.
- eska 8y ago
  Rayiner, thank you for your reply to my comment. I might have worded it poorly, but it wasn't my intention to imply that the author of the article blames the law for it. I was merely trying to point out explicitly why this article is about women, and that it's not due to discrimination by the government through law. Furthermore I don't even think that this happens indirectly as you pointed out as possibly the case with your comparison to voter ID. I also tried to mention explicitly that the "gender norms" you refer to are apparently mostly not imposed by men on women, but women on women. The article doesn't discuss this at all, instead mentions men spending less time with housework (which they probably even do in single households), etc.
hrktb 8y ago
Considering there is currently a salary gap, however we explain it, and from the law structure the lower paid spouse benefits from being paid less, isn't it a logical move for women to adjust/be adjusted from the start for that situation ? Your points are all correct in general, but I don't see how it goes against the argument of the article. It seems you are detailing the behaviours women end up taking facing the current situation, while the author argues about ways to affect the root cause.
- eska 8y ago
  Thank you for your reply, hrktb. As I implied in the first paragraph of my previous comment, even if we supposed that no pay gap existed, I don't think that it would solve the problem. Studies have shown what would happen: single women would improve their careers, thereby reducing the amount of men that are doing better than them, thereby reducing the pool of potential spouses they would even consider. Ultimately this would not result in those women picking men that are doing worse than them and have them take care of the household and children, instead they would stay single. So the situation for women that have started a family would not change much, because those are mostly the women who have found somebody at their level of success or above. You're absolutely correct that I'm detailing the behaviors of women. I do so because I recognize the problem you're trying to solve with your suggestion to solve things with policy regarding pay (I assume), but I think the cause is not rooted in policy but in culture, specifically women's ideas of an ideal mate.
  - hrktb 8y ago
    I see your point, but is it even possible to build a study demonstrating what would happen if the pay gap disappeared at scale ? Any study that would for instance focus on a microcosm where women earn as much as men wouldn’t be isolated by the rest of society’s effect on the individual’s value system or image of success. What I mean is culture is influenced by reality, movies like Pretty Woman weren’t setup that way by pure imagination, the authors still wanted a somewhat realistic starting situation. Same with parents raising their kids, the culture they foster depends on their experience of life. If for their whole existence women couldn’t build a family without their career getting in the way, they’ll hedge their bets when raising their daughters. I don’t think the author’s proposition will easily pass in the current political climate, but I’d see the value in trying to change reality first, to have people acknowledge that the game has changed, and think for themselves better strategies for their life. I’d compare it as how family values have changed in countries where elderly get government help. While for centuries they’d clinge to their kids as the primary source of retirement support, once a generation or two actualy saw that they could mostly get by by themselves, kids/parents relations changed, culture changed.

by eska 8y ago

mikekchar 8y ago

Just to agree with you on the bentou boxes. I worked in a high school for 5 years and often ate lunch with the students. Never once did I see an overly cute benou box :-) My wife makes my bentou box, but at that time I made hers. It takes about 20 minutes to make in the morning, but you have to be organised. Japanese people also tend to have a large, cooked morning meal (which my wife now makes, but when I was working at the school I made for her). For me, I'd often be cooking for about an hour every morning (including both breakfast and lunch), which meant getting up at about 6. Japanese people bathe at night, which frees up a bit of time. I don't want to understate the difficulty that women have in the workplace in Japan. The breakfast and lunch are manageable, but then you have to do laundry (and if you have school kids, it's a big job in Japan). People hang their laundry outside, so it's a problem if you aren't there to get it if it rains. You have to be back in time to cook dinner for your kids, but you have responsibilities to stay late at work most days, etc, etc. Some of my female colleagues barely slept and it just wasn't healthy. Distributing the workload is not so hard, but it needs a cultural shift. It's slowly happening though. You may note that my wife cooks for me now and wonder why... I liked doing breakfast and lunch, but I think my wife prefers doing it herself (my bentous aren't very good, I'll admit). I suspect (but don't know) that she also feels better, as a woman, if she does that job. That's a strange idea in western culture, but perhaps it will sound more understandable if I say that I feel better, as a man, if I make a salary. Stupid and arbitrary, but culture is like that sometimes. It's hard to change and you need to go slowly.

eska 8y ago
Thank you for your input, mikekchar. Even if anecdotal, it mirrors my experiences and what I hear from Japanese acquaintances as well. I agree that the cultural shift might just take more time, but is already happening. I see parallels to earlier developments in the west.

rayiner 8y ago

> The author tries really hard to make this a woman's issue, but as far as I know the law doesn't lay out different rules for women specifically, just the less-earning spouses that take care of the children, so the same problems exist for husbands that stay at home. The article doesn't claim that the law is intentionally discriminatory. It says that the law disincentivizes women to work, which can be true even if that is not the intent of the law. Stricter voter ID requirements don't facially discriminate between different groups, but they still have the effect of suppressing voting by minority groups because of how they interact with other social factors. And the underlying claim is an uncontroversial one in economics: tax or welfare benefits that phase out with higher incomes disincentivize work. That's a generic truth about economics. It just happens to be a "woman's issue" in this context because (1) women happen to disproportionately have the lower paying jobs, because of gender norms; and (2) Abe's government is trying to get more women in the workforce to deal with Japan's crushing labor shortage.

eska 8y ago
Rayiner, thank you for your reply to my comment. I might have worded it poorly, but it wasn't my intention to imply that the author of the article blames the law for it. I was merely trying to point out explicitly why this article is about women, and that it's not due to discrimination by the government through law. Furthermore I don't even think that this happens indirectly as you pointed out as possibly the case with your comparison to voter ID. I also tried to mention explicitly that the "gender norms" you refer to are apparently mostly not imposed by men on women, but women on women. The article doesn't discuss this at all, instead mentions men spending less time with housework (which they probably even do in single households), etc.

hrktb 8y ago

Considering there is currently a salary gap, however we explain it, and from the law structure the lower paid spouse benefits from being paid less, isn't it a logical move for women to adjust/be adjusted from the start for that situation ? Your points are all correct in general, but I don't see how it goes against the argument of the article. It seems you are detailing the behaviours women end up taking facing the current situation, while the author argues about ways to affect the root cause.

eska 8y ago
Thank you for your reply, hrktb. As I implied in the first paragraph of my previous comment, even if we supposed that no pay gap existed, I don't think that it would solve the problem. Studies have shown what would happen: single women would improve their careers, thereby reducing the amount of men that are doing better than them, thereby reducing the pool of potential spouses they would even consider. Ultimately this would not result in those women picking men that are doing worse than them and have them take care of the household and children, instead they would stay single. So the situation for women that have started a family would not change much, because those are mostly the women who have found somebody at their level of success or above. You're absolutely correct that I'm detailing the behaviors of women. I do so because I recognize the problem you're trying to solve with your suggestion to solve things with policy regarding pay (I assume), but I think the cause is not rooted in policy but in culture, specifically women's ideas of an ideal mate.
- hrktb 8y ago
  I see your point, but is it even possible to build a study demonstrating what would happen if the pay gap disappeared at scale ? Any study that would for instance focus on a microcosm where women earn as much as men wouldn’t be isolated by the rest of society’s effect on the individual’s value system or image of success. What I mean is culture is influenced by reality, movies like Pretty Woman weren’t setup that way by pure imagination, the authors still wanted a somewhat realistic starting situation. Same with parents raising their kids, the culture they foster depends on their experience of life. If for their whole existence women couldn’t build a family without their career getting in the way, they’ll hedge their bets when raising their daughters. I don’t think the author’s proposition will easily pass in the current political climate, but I’d see the value in trying to change reality first, to have people acknowledge that the game has changed, and think for themselves better strategies for their life. I’d compare it as how family values have changed in countries where elderly get government help. While for centuries they’d clinge to their kids as the primary source of retirement support, once a generation or two actualy saw that they could mostly get by by themselves, kids/parents relations changed, culture changed.