I write in response to Kathryn Ibata-Arens' post, titled "Abenomics: How promoting women could get Japan out of this crisis." She wrote: "Prime Minister Abe has an opportunity to forge a triple win: a larger pool of professional women can provide his Liberal Democratic Party with much needed new constituents to replace its dying (literally) base, these women will become more likely to have children, and best of all, boost growth in the Japanese economy in the long-term."

This argument strikes me as parallel to those who believe that Germany's Christian Democratic Party (CDP) did itself a favor by courting "sustainable family policy" (more generous, shorter parental leaves, and a big increase in childcare for children age one and over), because they gained votes among young urban women who care deeply about work-family policies. At the same time, Germany adopted policies that promised to increase its very low total fertility rate and at the same time promote economic expansion.

But the huge, perhaps insurmountable problems facing such a policy shift are the money it would take to provide sufficient spaces in licensed hoikuen (childcare centers) to meet existing and future demand from women who want to return to work, and the reluctance of the LDP (or any other governing party) to insist that companies enforce parental leave laws (keeping their employees' jobs open while they take a
12 month parental leave rather than tapping them on the shoulder and expecting them to quit and not come back), much less insist that companies stop discriminating against women in hiring. It seems pretty clear to me that the intellectual arguments for hiring talented women for good jobs, and for including them in corporate leadership, simply are not enough to persuade powerful actors in Japan to change the approach they have taken thus far to policies that reinforce a male breadwinner model and protect the jobs of mid-level male employees in regular positions.

Germany managed to conduct a powerful campaign to get business to back work-family policies in the early 2000s (the Alliance for the Family, a locally-based grassroots campaign to get business, civil society groups, local mayors and other leaders, charitable and church groups, etc), and the CDP recognized that it needed to embrace the same set of policies if it wanted to remain competitive. What would it take for Japan and the LDP to do the same thing? That's the $64 question, and I don't know the answer to it. Hearing and reading more demographic and feminist economic-political arguments about the need to utilize smart women in order to boost the economy and the birth rate isn't likely to have much effect, from what I can see.

Pat Boling

Patricia Boling, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Undergraduate Director, Department of Political Science Purdue University