Abstract
The global community, from UNESCO to NGOs, is committed to promoting the status of women in science, engineering and technology, despite long-held prejudices and the lack of role models. Previously, when equality was not firmly established as a key issue on international or national agendas, women’s colleges played a great role in mentoring female scientists. However, now that a concerted effort has been made by governments, the academic community and the private sector to give women equal opportunities, the raison d’être of women’s universities seems to have become lost. This paper argues otherwise, by demonstrating that women’s universities in Japan became beneficiaries of government initiatives since the early 2000s to reverse the low ratio of women in scientific research. The paper underscores the importance of the reputation of women’s universities embedded in their institutional foundations, by explaining how female scientific communities take shape in different national contexts. England, as a primary example of a neoliberal welfare regime, with its strong emphasis on equality and diversity, promoted its gender equality policy under the auspices of the Department of Trade and Industry. By contrast, with a strong emphasis on family values and the male-breadwinner model, the Japanese government carefully treated the goal of supporting female scientists from the perspective of the equal participation of both men and women rather than that of equality. Following this trend, rather contradictorily, women’s universities, with their tradition of fostering a ‘good wife, wise mother’ image, began to be highlighted as potential gender-free institutions that provided role models and mentoring female scientists. By drawing on the cases of England and Japan, this paper demonstrates how the idea of equality can be framed differently, according to wider institutional contexts, and how this idea impacts on gender policies.
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Notes
The Geneva-based international non-profit organisation, the World Economic Forum, has published a report entitled Global Gender Gap Report annually since 2005, which covers and ranks 130 major and emerging economies. Thirteen out of the fourteen variables used for assessing inequality between men and women are based on publicly available data from the International Labour Organisation, the United Nations Development Programme and the World Health Organisation.
For this paper, we are using England for ease of reference, although UK government policies on women in SET are aimed at all four administrative units in the United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland).
The Imperial Women's Medical and Pharmaceutical College was founded in 1930, followed by the Imperial Women's College of Science in 1941. Although the latter produced a prominent geochemist, Katsuko Saruhashi, the college became co-educational in 1950. Tsudajuku College introduced science in 1943 in order to meet the wartime need for women in SET.
New Hall College has been renamed as Murray Edwards College as of 2008.
In the UK, alumnae include the engineer Hertha Aryton (1854–1923, Girton), biophysicist Rosalind Franklin (1920–1958, Newnham), chemist Dorothy Hodgkin (1910–1994, Somerville), pharmacologist Baroness Greenfield (1950-, St Hilda’s) and astrophysicist Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell (1943-, Ph.D from New Hall). In Japan, apart from the above mentioned two scientists, the mathematician Shihoko Ishii (1950-, TWCU), earth scientist Katsuko Saruhashi (1920–2007, Imperial Women's College of Science) and chemist Reiko Kuroda (1947-, Ochanomizu) are some of the well-known names.
A good indicator of the reputation of traditional women’s universities can be the record of overall success for their graduates in the job market. The ratio of graduates who started off their careers in large corporations such as Hitachi, Toshiba, Fujitsu and Canon is known to be very high (roughly thirty percent). In 2007, among the top twenty in this league table, four were women’s universities (Weekly Economist, 2007).
This was clear in the parliamentary debates leading up to the passing of the new law. The opposition party member Yuiko Matsumoto raised a question in the House of Representatives Cabinet Committee on 6 March 1996, highlighting a difference between government’s final plan (The 2000 Plan for Equal Participation of Men and Women) and some policy consultation documents (notably the paper Vision for Equal Participation of Men and Women) in the way ‘gender’ was conceptualized. Notably, the terms ‘gender free society’ or ‘gender equality’ were not included as ultimate goals.
The Institute for Gender Studies, Ochanomizu University, Catalogue of Chika Kuroda’s Archives (2000); Women’s Self-support and Science Education: A History of the Science Department of Tsudajuku College (1987).
As of 2008, full membership had been given to 38 academic societies, and observer status to 29 societies (see http://annex.jsap.or.jp/renrakukai/outline.html).
The high proportion of female teaching staff in SET is also remarkable in private women’s universities such as Japan Women’s University (32%) and Tsudajuku University (28%), compared to the two major private universities, Waseda University (4%) and Keio University (19%), as of 2008 (data provided by Japan Women’s University).
Although the overall recruitment target for female researchers in the natural sciences is 25%, specific targets vary by field: 30% for health and life sciences, 30% for agricultural sciences, 20% for physical sciences, and 15% for engineering.
In Japanese, Shōshika Tantō Daijin means “Minister for Tackling the Low Fertility Rate”.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank all those who took part in this project. We are also very grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments and feedback as well as those who gave comments on earlier versions. The study is partly funded by the Institute for Women’s Studies at Tokyo Woman’s Christian University as part of a larger project entitled “Women’s universities and the importance of their role in encouraging women in science” (2010/11).
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Appendix: List of interviewees/questionnaire respondents
Appendix: List of interviewees/questionnaire respondents
Coded name | Function | |
|---|---|---|
England | E-1 | Tutor (physics) at women’s college |
E-2 | Fellow (life sciences) at women’s college | |
E-3 | Researcher, SET Women, mentor coodinator | |
E-4 | Advisor for WiSETI at the University of Cambridge | |
E-5 | Director of women’s college | |
E-6 | Senior lecturer (science education), SET Women | |
E-7 | Coordinator, CamAWiSE | |
Japan | J-1 | Director of women’s university |
J-2 | Professor (physics) at women’s university | |
J-3 | Director of women’s university | |
J-4 | Director of women’s university | |
J-5 | Director, Female Researcher Support Centre at former national university | |
J-6 | Deputy Director, Female Researcher Support Programme at women’s university | |
J-7 | Director, government agency (science and technology) | |
J-8 | Director of women’s university |
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Kodate, N., Kodate, K. & Kodate, T. Mission Completed? Changing Visibility of Women’s Colleges in England and Japan and Their Roles in Promoting Gender Equality in Science. Minerva 48, 309–330 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-010-9150-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-010-9150-2