Mini-International Workshop hosted at the Graduate School of Law, Nagoya University

"Growing Gender Gaps in East Asian Democracies: Paradoxes of Women's Political Citizenship in Japan, Korea and Taiwan"

Monday, December 16th (15:00-17:30)
Asian Legal Exchange Plaza Building (Lecture Room 3)

Despite the shared socio-cultural norms and lower status of women, women's political representation in the East Asian democracies of Japan, Korea and Taiwan varies widely across these mixed-member majoritarian systems. Taiwan is by far the most advanced, with women's share in the national legislature closest to gender balance at almost a quarter (38%). Korea has stagnated around one fifth (17%) elected women while Japanese women legislators hold a mere 10% of Lower House seats. What explains these paradoxical outputs in terms of women's equality, political representation and enjoyment of democratic citizenship all within the same mixed-member majoritarian system. This mini international workshop delves into a comparative political analysis of the formal and informal factors affecting women's political representation, resistance to equality within democratic institutions, and the puzzling gender gaps that continue across this vibrant East Asian region. During this workshop, we will hear presentations from four scholars, followed by a moderated workshop discussion with senior and junior students of gender, diversity and politics.

Presenters
Dr. Sarah Liu, Assistant Professor in Gender and Politics, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Dr. Chang-Ling Huang, Professor, Political Science Department, Taiwan National University, Taiwan
Dr. Jackie F. Steele, Designated Associate Professor, Graduate School of Law, Nagoya University, Japan
Dr. Emma Dalton, Lecturer, RMIT University, Australia

Detailed Schedule
15:00 Welcome / Opening Remarks: Dr. Jackie F. STEELE
15:05 Presenter 1: Dr. Sarah LIU, "Gender gaps in political participation in Asia"
15:25 Presenter 2: Dr. Jackie F. STEELE, "From power-sharing to chronic male domination in three East Asian MMM systems"
15:45 Presenter 3: Dr. Chang-Ling HUANG, "Gender quotas and increasing political competitiveness in Taiwan"
16:05 Presenter 4: Dr. Emma DALTON, "Legislative assemblies as workplaces: Addressing sexual harassment in Japanese politics"

Discussion
Moderator: Dr. Jackie F. STEELE
16:25-17:25 Questions from the Floor / Group Discussion
17:30 Close of the Workshop

Organizer: Dr. Jackie F. Steele, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Law, Nagoya University
Co-founder, Research Network on Gender and Diversity in Political Representation (GDRep), Japan
* Please e-mail steele@law.nagoya-u.ac.jp if you wish to join the workshop.

Funding: Nagoya University, and JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Research (Daihyo: Miura Mari)
Collaborators: Women and Diversity in East Asian Political Representation (Wonder) Research Network;
IPSA RC19, International Political Science Association Research Committee on Gender, Politics and Policy.


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PRESENTER PROFILES

Sarah Liu is currently a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Politics and International Relations at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on the cross-national comparison of gender and politics, specifically the ways contexts shape the gender gap in political attitudes and activities. Utilizing multilevel modeling approaches, her work examines the influence of female political leaders on women's political participation. Her research investigates the role model effect of cabinet ministers in democracies, a previously ignored political arena, and the role model effect of legislators in Asia, a grossly underexplored area in extant studies.

Jackie F. Steele is Designated Associate Professor, Graduate School of Law, Nagoya University, and co-founder of the Research Network on Gender and Diversity in Political Representation in Japan (GDRep). Jackie's research in interdisciplinary, combining critical democratic theory, disaster risk governance, feminist political philosophy, federalism, electoral systems design, and feminist public policy. Her research on diverse citizenship in Japan/Canada tracks the ongoing contradictions and inconsistencies across various mechanisms to diversify representative democratic processes and institutions in light of intersectional understandings of complex political identity. She has scholarly published books and articles in English, French and Japanese.

Chang-Ling Huang is a professor of political science at National Taiwan University. Her research interests are quota politics and state feminism. She studied gender quotas in politics and corporations and has used empirical data from Taiwan to show most of the quota women in politics have equal or better qualifications than the men they replaced. While the current agenda of quota research has gradually moved from quota adoption to quota impact, East Asia's story regarding quota adoption remains understudied, and Huang aims to fill that void through this project. Huang recently authored chapters on women's political representation for Routledge Handbook of Democratization in East Asia (Routledge, 2017) and The Palgrave Global Handbook of Women's Political Rights (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).

Emma Dalton is a Japanese lecturer in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University. She has lectured at universities in Australia, New Zealand and Japan for over a decade in the areas of Japanese language and Japanese and Asian Studies. Her research interests include the relationship between women and the Japanese state, and especially the position of women in politics. She publishes widely for academic, student and media audiences. Her most recent journal article, 'A feminist critical discourse analysis of sexual harassment in the Japanese political and media worlds' appears in volume 77 of Women's Studies International Forum. This year she is also a Japan Foundation Fellow and a visiting researcher at Sophia University.

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Dr. Jackie F. Steele 　スティール若希
名古屋大学大学院法学研究科、特任准教授
Designated Associate Professor
Graduate School of Law, Nagoya University
steele@law-nagoya-u.ac.jp