versial policy encourages the use of immigrant domestic workers in specially-designated economic zones, in order to improve women’s labour participation. This policy has been criticised for entrenching the idea that housework and childcare are women’s responsibilities. It leaves intact a work culture that makes it difficult for full-time employees to take part in childcare and domestic labour and achieve work-life balance.
It is likely that only elite professionals would be able to afford such assistance. This policy will do little to assist the large numbers of women who still leave work on the birth of their children and can only find part-time work when they return to the workplace. It would also entrench regional inequalities as those from poorer nations travel to richer nations to engage in domestic work and care work. Policies on gender relations need to be seen in a transnational and regional frame.
The ‘baby-boomer’ generation of feminists who led the women’s liberation movement of the early 1970s and the reformist feminist groups of the 1970s and 1980s are now at retirement age. They must be experiencing a sense of déjà vu, as the issues of work-life balance that they raised in the 1970s are still being debated and seem far from being resolved. This cohort of baby boomers is also dealing with the issues of Japan’s ageing society. Many face their own retirement while dealing with their own ageing family members’ need for care.
Issues of work-life balance and the gendered dimensions of the ageing society appear prominently in recent editions of feminist magazines and the websites of NGOs. A recent seminar held by the Women’s Action Network (WAN) was aligned with international campaigns on ‘decent work’. The WAN website brought these issues to life with the testimony of a working mother. ‘What I finally realised’, she wrote, ‘is that I should never hand over to the next generation the difficult working and living conditions I experienced as a working mother … we must change them’.
The history of the Asia-Pacific war continues to be a matter of debate in feminist circles, seven decades on. At the end of 2015, the governments of Japan and South Korea attempted a bilateral resolution on the issue of wartime military sexual slavery. The agreement proposed that the Japanese government would provide support to the elderly survivors through a fund to be administered by the South Korean government.
This attempted resolution was roundly criticised, not least by the survivors themselves. The two governments had failed to consult survivors, the major stakeholders, thereby displaying ignorance of the principles of restorative justice. The agreement also failed to include survivors from countries other than South Korea. It is thanks to transnational feminist activism — bringing together networks of activists from throughout Asia and the Pacific — that this issue has stayed at the forefront of international attention seven decades after the war.
In the months since the initial announcement of the agreement, there has been little progress in resolving this issue. The latest election in July 2016 gave the Liberal Democratic Party control of the upper house for the first time since 1989, providing Abe with more scope to pursue his conservative agenda.
Three years on from Abe’s womenomics speech, the flawed bilateral Japan–South Korea agreement reveals the need for more thorough integration of feminist perspectives not only in Japan’s domestic policies but also in its international relations.