East Asia

Citation:

Author: E. Owen D. Waygood

Abstract:

The majority of mothers in Japan are not employed outside the home, but their role in chauffeuring and accompanying children on their trips is much less than in Western societies. Cultural expectations and the built environment in the Osaka region of Japan contribute to children as young as 10 and 11 traveling without adult accompaniment for the majority of trips. This independent travel in turn reduces the chauffeuring burden on parents. The chauffeuring of children in the United States and other Western countries is conducted mostly by mothers, but the role of mothers in the travel context of their children’s travel has not been investigated for Japan. Children ages 10 and 11, from nine different schools in varying neighborhoods, were surveyed about their travel by using a child-friendly diary. The survey results show that parents accompanied children for less than 15% of their trips on weekdays, whereas data from the United States indicate that children are accompanied by a parent on more than 65% of weekday trips they make. The average daily travel time was 40 min for children in Japan versus 72 min for their American counterparts, despite a similar number of trips per day. The paper further examines children’s trips with the accompaniment of parents, by sex of parent, by time of day and mode, and by destination. The influence of various built environment measurements and car ownership on accompaniment and the accumulated time burden on parents is also examined. This research contributes to land use planning through examining the built environment and mobility management through discussion on cultural values.

Topics: Age, Youth, Gender, Households, Infrastructure, Transportation Regions: Asia, East Asia Countries: Japan

Year: 2011

Citation:

Authors: Roberta Hawkins, Joni Seager

Abstract:

Keywords: gender, Mongolia, water, water management, 性别, 蒙古, 水, 水管理, gênero, agua, manejo del agua

Topics: Gender, Men, Gender Analysis, Governance, Infrastructure, Water & Sanitation Regions: Asia, East Asia Countries: Mongolia

Year: 2010

Citation:

Han, Jongwoo, and L. H. M Ling. 1998. “Authoritarianism in the Hypermasculinized State: Hybridity, Patriarchy, and Capitalism in Korea.” International Studies Quarterly 42 (1): 53–78.

Authors: Jongwoo Han, L. H. M Ling

Abstract:

Authoritarianism in East Asia's capitalist developmental state (CDS) is highly gendered. A hybrid product of Western masculinist capitalism and Confucian parental governance, CDS authoritarianism takes on a hypermasculinized developmentalism that assumes all the rights and privileges of classical Confucian patriarchy for the state while assigning to society the characteristics of classical Confucian womanhood: diligence, discipline, and deference. Society subsequently bears the burden of economic development without equal access to political representation or voice. Women in the CDS now face three tiers of patriarchal authority and exploitation: family, state, and economy. Nevertheless, new opportunities for democratization may arise even in the hypermasculinized state. We suggest: (1) em- phasizing substantive, notjust procedural, democratization, (2) exercising a maternalized discourse of dissent, and (3) applying hybrid strategies of social mobilization across states, societies, cultures, and movements. South Korea during the 1960s-1970s serves as our case study.

Topics: Economies, Feminisms, Gender, Gender Analysis, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Governance, Political Economies Regions: Asia, East Asia Countries: South Korea

Year: 1998

Citation:

Särmä, Saara. 2014. “Junk Feminism and Nuclear Wannabes: Collaging Parodies of Iran and North Korea.” PhD diss., Tampere University.

Author: Saara Särmä

Abstract:

Nuclear weapons have been a great source of intense negative sentiments, mainly fear, over the past 70 years. The intensity of these sentiments has fluctuated over the decades as the relative positions of and the relations between nuclear weapons states have shifted and changed. This doctoral dissertation deals with a different register of sentiments, equally familiar, but not often associated with the issue. It turns to sentiments that are more positive and examines laughter’s role in world politics. It focuses on the actors located at the bottom of the global nuclear order, namely nuclear wannabes. The global nuclear order is a hierarchy institutionalized in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which divides the world into nuclear haves and have-nots. Nuclear wannabes are those states that want to move from have-not to have by acquiring nuclear arsenals, i.e. Iran and North Korea. The dissertation explores (loosely western) everyday understandings of nuclear wannabes and argues that the global nuclear order is reproduced in humorous everyday representations of these states. It takes the internet and social media seriously as sites where everyday understandings are constituted. It argues that the knowledges produced in and through the internet are increasingly anecdotal and fragmented, and that humor and laughter play a role in the knowledge production and circulation. It looks at how laughter at actors depicted in internet parodies orders the global nuclear hierarchy, in particular, and orders the international more broadly. Furthermore, it examines the boundary conditions created by this laugher. The work situates theoretically in the transdisciplinary field of Feminist International Relations and sees gender as relational, performative, and hierarchical. To engage with the fragmented mode of knowledge and random collection of “stuff” (research material) an art based methodology is developed. Junk feminist collaging experiments with a playful mode of doing research, which advocates for openness and creativity in research; for modes of writing and expression that disrupt the hierarchical relationship with the author and the reader; and for doing research by making art. The collages created during the research process and presented as part of this dissertation are a unique intervention. This intervention challenges the priority of text over images in conventional academic modes of presenting research and invites the reader/viewer to participate actively in meaning making. The collages visualize the ways in which nuclear wannabes are gendered and sexualized, as these processes are central to the creation, recreation and maintenance of the hierarchical international order.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Feminisms, Gender, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Regions: MENA, Asia, East Asia, Middle East Countries: Iran, North Korea

Year: 2014

Citation:

Author: Jin Jianjun

Abstract:

This study examines the gender differences in farmers' responses to climate change adaption in Yongqiao District, China. A random sampling technique was used to select 220 household heads, while descriptive statistics and binary logit models were used to analyze the data obtained from the households. We determine that male and female respondents are not significantly different in their knowledge and perceptions of climate change, but there is a gender difference in adopting climate change adaptation measures. Male-headed households are more likely to adopt new technology for water conservation and to increase investment in irrigation infrastructure. The research also indicates that the adaptation decisions of male and female heads are influenced by different sets of factors. The findings of this research help to elucidate the determinants of climate change adaptation decisions for male and female-headed households and the strategic interventions necessary for effective adaptation. 

Keywords: adaptation, climate change, farmer, gender, China

Topics: Environment, Climate Change, Gender, Households, Infrastructure, Water & Sanitation Regions: Asia, East Asia Countries: China

Year: 2015

Citation:

Anderson, Cheryl L. 2009. “Gendered Dimensions of Disaster Risk Management, Natural Resource Management, and Climate Change Adaptation in the Pacific.” Women in Fisheries Information Bulletin, no. 20, 3–9.

Author: Cheryl L. Anderson

Annotation:

Topics: Development, Environment, Climate Change, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Security, Human Security Regions: Asia, East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Oceania

Year: 2009

Citation:

Takenaka, Akiko. 2016. “Gender and Post-War Relief: Support for War-Widowed Mothers in Occupied Japan (1945-52).” Gender & History 28 (3): 775–93. 

Author: Akiko Takenaka

Abstract:

This article analyses the gender implications that emerged through welfare support for the war‐bereaved in post‐Asia‐Pacific War Japan. It follows the foundation, activities and dissolution of the Federation of Bereaved War Victims, the first support group for the war‐bereaved that initially began as an organisation for military widows. After its dissolution, members of the Federation went on to create two separate groups – the Victims’ Federation and Widows’ Federation – whose members, scope and objectives presented stark gendered divisions. By examining this divide, and by analysing the earlier histories of the organisations, this article explores the relationships among gender, military, death and bereavement, and post‐war relief. The article pays particular attention to the tensions and negotiations among various interest groups, including military widows, women widowed from other causes, feminist activists, male lawmakers, bereaved fathers and the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers. I place the dissolution of the Federation in its social and political contexts and analyse its relationship to the contemporaneous discussions on female citizenship. In particular, I focus on two areas mobilised by Japanese feminist activists since the early twentieth century: suffrage and motherhood. The short history of the Federation provides a means to examine the reconfiguration of the connection between gender and citizenship during the demilitarisation and democratisation processes that occurred in occupied Japan.

Topics: Citizenship, Democracy / Democratization, Gender, Governance, Post-Conflict Governance, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Post-Conflict Regions: Asia, East Asia Countries: Japan

Year: 2016

Citation:

Motoyama, Hisako. 2018. “Formulating Japan’s UNSCR 1325 National Action Plan and Forgetting the ‘Comfort Women.’” International Feminist Journal of Politics 20 (1): 39–53.

Author: Hisako Motoyama

Abstract:

In September 2015, the Japanese government announced its first national action plan (NAP) to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1325, just ten days after forcefully legislating controversial security bills that would effectively lift the constitutional restrictions on overseas exercise of military force. Why did the conservative administration embrace Resolution 1325 while propelling militarization? This paper examines the formulation process of Japan’s NAP, focusing on gendered struggle over remilitarization and war memory, especially that of the “comfort women,” or Japanese imperial military sexual slavery during World War II. I will examine how post–Cold War remilitarization in Japan was closely intertwined with the struggle over war memory and the gender order of the nation, and how the conservative administration embraced international gender equality norms in an attempt to identify itself as a powerful liberal democracy engaged in maintaining the international security order, and to erase the memory of imperial military sexual violence in the past. By doing so, I attempt to critically reconsider the framework of the UN Women, Peace and Security agenda, which constructs powerful developed nations “not in conflict” as innocent supporters of women in conflict zones.

Keywords: Security Council Resolution 1325, women, peace and security, military sexual violence, imperialism, militarization

Topics: Democracy / Democratization, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Peace and Security, International Organizations, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarization, Security, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS, UNSCR 1325, Sexual Violence, Sexual Slavery, SV against Women Regions: Asia, East Asia Countries: Japan

Year: 2018

Citation:

Liu, Chu-Li Julie, and Faye Mishna. 2014. “Resilience in a Cultural Context: Taiwanese Female Earthquake Survivors.” Qualitative Social Work 13 (2): 288–303.

Authors: Chu-Li Julie Liu, Faye Mishna

Abstract:

The aim of the current study was to examine how females survive natural disaster in non-western culture and to gain understanding of their unique experiences in rebuilding their lives. In September 1999, a major earthquake, named ‘921 Earthquake,’ measuring 7.3 on the Richter Scale occurred in Taiwan. Many people survived, struggling a great deal in their efforts to reconstruct their lives. Five years after this earthquake, many survivors, including women, were reported to have rebuilt self-sufficient lives. Given the vulnerability of women and their greater difficulties in resuming their lives, an important question was how these women were able to be successful in this endeavor. Utilizing a grounded theory approach, 16 female 921 Earthquake survivors who had been helped by social workers, no longer received government aid and had successfully regained their selfsufficiency, voluntarily participated in this study. The study findings revealed that the coping strategies guided by female gender norms in the family, embedded in Taiwanese culture, including: children’s needs are the first priority as a maternal role norm; men working outside and women working inside; and female gender norms of supporting the family when husbands could not, were the major resources participants accessed and utilized to successfully cope with the difficulties after the 921 Earthquake. The participants’ narratives demonstrated that cultural norms can serve as coping resources for survivors. Implications for social work practice are addressed.

Keywords: coping strategies, cultural norms, female earthquake survivors, grounded theory approach, Taiwan

Topics: Environment, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Women, Gender Roles Regions: Asia, East Asia Countries: Taiwan

Year: 2014

Citation:

Chen, Jiajian, Hongyan Liu, and Zhenming Xie. 2010. “Effects of Rural-Urban Return Migration on Women’s Family Planning and Reproductive Health Attitudes and Behavior in Rural China.” Studies in Family Planning 41 (1): 31-44.

Authors: Jiajian Chen , Hongyan Liu, Zhenming Xie

Abstract:

This study examines the effects of rural-urban return migration on women's family planning and reproductive health attitudes and behavior in the sending areas of rural China. Based on data from a survey of rural women aged 16-40 in Sichuan and Anhui Provinces in 2000, our study finds that migrant women returning from cities to the countryside, especially those who have been living in a large city, are more likely than nonmigrant women to adopt positive family planning and reproductive health attitudes and behavior in their rural communities of origin. We find, moreover, that living in a rural community where the prevalence of such return migrant women is higher is positively associated with new fertility and gender attitudes and with knowledge of self-controllable contraceptives. The findings of significant rural-urban return-migration effects have important policy implications for shaping family planning and reproductive health attitudes and behaviors in rural China.

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Migration, Gender, Women, Gendered Discourses, Health, Reproductive Health Regions: Asia, East Asia Countries: China

Year: 2010