Share this story About sharing
The hashtag #メガネ禁止 (#GlassesBan) was trending on Twitter by Wednesday, with men and women saying they disagreed with the policy. Yanfei Zhou, a researcher on the Japan Institute for Labor Policy & Training and creator of a e-book on the subject, “Japan’s Married Stay-at-Home Mothers in Poverty,” contends there’s a niche of 200 million yen ($1.eighty two million) in lifetime income between women who work full-time and girls who swap from full-time to part-time at the age of forty. More than forty% of part-time working women earn 1 million yen ($9,one hundred) or much less a 12 months, according to Japan’s Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry. The lack of advantages, job security and alternative for advancement—hallmarks of full-time employment in Japan—make such women financially vulnerable, notably in the event that they don’t have a partner to share expenses with.
The Nippon TV network and Business Insider were among the shops to report on the problem, which looked at how firms in several industries prohibit women from carrying glasses. Wearing glasses at work has turn out to be an emotive subject in Japan following reports that some corporations have advised feminine staff to take away them. Earlier this 12 months there was a name for Japanese companies to stop forcing feminine employees to wear excessive heels. More than 21,000 people signed an internet petition began by a feminine actor in what has become generally known as the #KuToo motion. “If the principles prohibit solely women to wear glasses, this can be a discrimination against women,” Kanae Doi, the Japan director at Human Rights Watch, informed the Thomson Reuters Foundation on Friday.
The hashtag “glasses are forbidden” (#メガネ禁止) has been trending on social media in Japan this week following the airing of a program on the Nippon TV community exploring how firms in different sectors don’t permit female employees to put on glasses on the job. The program followed a report revealed late last month by Business Insider Japan (hyperlink in Japanese) on the same issue. Japanese women on social media are demanding the proper to wear glasses to work, after reports that employers were imposing bans. According to the BBC, a number of Japanese retailers said corporations have “banned” women from carrying eyeglasses and that they offer a “cold impression” to female store assistants. The program listed a number of reasons that employers gave for not wanting women to put on glasses whereas at work.
Japan ‘glasses ban’ for girls at work sparks backlash
A more substantial policy provides dormitory subsidies to women from outdoors Greater Tokyo, an effort to mollify dad and mom who may worry about safety in the huge metropolis. The college pays 30,000 yen a month — roughly $275 — for about a hundred female college students. Critics have attacked the policy as discriminatory in opposition to men. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has promoted an agenda of female empowerment, boasting that Japan’s labor force participation fee among women outranks even the United States. Yet few women make it to the chief suite or the very best levels of government.
Japanese men generally see their compensation rise till they attain 60. For women, common compensation stays largely the identical from their late twenties to their sixties, a reality attributable to pauses in employment tied to having youngsters or half-time, rather than full-time, work. Since the mid-2000s, part-time employment charges have fallen for women in more than half the countries that make up the OECD. But in Japan, the trend is reversed, with part-time work amongst women rising over the past 15 years.
But there are extra obstacles for Japanese women. Although 3.5 million of them have entered the workforce since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took workplace in 2012, two-thirds are working only part-time. With entitlement costs skyrocketing, the federal government has responded by scaling again benefits whereas proposing to raise the retirement age. Some Japanese responded by moving money out of low-interest financial institution accounts and into 401(okay)-fashion retirement plans, hoping investment gains might soften the blow.
‘Don’t Tell Us What To Wear’: Japanese Women Protest Workplace Glasses Ban
Domestic airlines mentioned it was for security causes, firms within the magnificence trade mentioned it was difficult to see the employee’s make-up correctly behind glasses, while main retail chains mentioned feminine shop assistants give off a “cold impression” if they wear glasses. Traditional Japanese restaurants mentioned that glasses simply do not go properly with traditional Japanese dress. Earlier this 12 months, Japanese women started voicing their discontent with arcane workplace restrictions on their looks through the #KuToo movement, which drew attention to the requirement that many corporations still have that women wear high heels to work.
BBC News Services
The refrain of discontent against the glasses ban echoes an identical phenomenon in South Korea last yr, when a female information anchor broke ranks and determined to wear glasses as a substitute of placing on contact lenses for her early morning present. The sight of a girl japan girls wearing glasses studying the news not solely shocked viewers, but also prompted a local airline to evaluation its own insurance policies and permit feminine cabin crew to wear glasses.
But such a method requires financial savings, and ladies in Japan are less likely to have any. But even with these advantages, Japanese women—whether or not single or married, full-time or part-time—face a difficult monetary future.
A confluence of factors that embrace an getting older population, falling start rates and anachronistic gender dynamics are conspiring to break their prospects for a snug retirement. According to Seiichi Inagaki, a professor on the International University of Health and Welfare, the poverty fee for older Japanese women will greater than double over the following 40 years, to 25%.
The time period #KuToo is a triple pun, taking part in on the Japanese phrases kutsu (shoes), kutsuu (ache), and the #MeToo motion. The explosion of interest in discriminatory remedy in opposition to women at the workplace also comes amid a growing rejection of sexist norms in Japanese society because the #MeToo movement began gaining floor since 2018. From mandatory excessive heels to a ban on glasses, Japanese women have been busy pushing again against restrictive and anachronistic dress codes within the office in 2019. That has sparked heated discussion on Japanese social media over gown practices and girls in the workplace. In the newest protest against inflexible guidelines over women’s appearance, the hashtag “glasses are forbidden” was trending on Twitter in reaction to a Japanese tv show that exposed companies that had been imposing the bans on feminine employees.
