世論 What Japan Thinks

[part 1] [part 2]

The Cabinet Office of Japan conducted a survey back in November and December of 2004 to discover what people thought about gender roles in society. Although slightly old, this survey, performed by proper statistical means, should have a high degree of accuracy. They chose 5,000 people for face-to-face interviews, with 3,502 of them consenting to be surveyed.

This is a rather sizeable survey, so the results will be published over two days.

This second half contains a number of rather interesting figures, showing that women seem to be accepting of their fate as housewives.

This was a rather difficult translation job – most of the other surveys just have short and snappy questions and answer options; here there were a few rather tricky sentences that I may have made a mistake or two with…

Q6: Please tell me your opinion regarding the following questions on marriage, family and divorce. (Sample size=3,502, multiple answer)

	Agree	Somewhat agree	Somewhat disagree	Disagree	Don’t know
Because marriage is a personal choice, either being married or not married is OK	44.5%	23.6%	16.4%	12.5%	3.1%
The husband should go out and work, the wife should protect the home	12.7%	32.5%	27.4%	21.5%	5.9%
When a woman marries, it is best for her to live centred on her husband and children rather than herself	17.6%	34.7%	28.3%	14.4%	5.0%
If you marry, it is not necessary to have kids	20.6%	20.8%	27.2%	24.2%	7.2%
If you are dissatisfied with your marriage partner, it is OK to divorce	23.2%	27.8%	25.8%	14.3%	8.9%

The breakdown of responses by sex and age displayed the trends one might expect; men and older people taking more traditional viewpoints. However, the difference between the sexes for most answers was never more than 10% or 20%; much less marked than the age differences.

Q7: (For married or living together people only) At your home, who performs the main share of the following housework tasks? (Sample size=2,677, multiple answer)

	Husband	Wife	Children	All	Someone else	Don’t know
Cleaning rooms	4.0%	77.6%	1.0%	15.4%	2.0%	0.0%
Preparing meals	1.2%	87.4%	1.4%	7.8%	2.0%	0.1%
Dish washing, etc	3.5%	78.9%	2.0%	13.9%	1.8%	0.0%

Note that the “someone else” might include grandparents or in-laws in extended families. Looking at the age breakdown, there is little significant change, but by sex, almost twice as many men reported that they, or all the family, were responsible for each of the tasks; this may very well be men overestimating their own contributions!

I do the hoovering once a week, and I almost always do the washing up. Actually, I remember hearing a statistic that washing up was the housework that wives hated the most.

Q8: (For married or living together people only) At your home, who makes the final decisions regarding the following? (Sample size=2,677, multiple answer)

	Husband	Wife	Children	All	Someone else	Don’t know
Family budget management	14.1%	67.1%	15.2%	1.8%	1.8%	0.1%
Considering all family matters, who wears the trousers?	48.5%	22.7%	22.9%	3.0%	2.4%	0.5%

There was very little difference between the sexes for both questions here.

Note that it is traditional in Japan that the wife manages the family budget, giving the husband just a small sum of pocket money to keep him fed and watered at work. That’s the way we work at our home too.

Q9: What do you think is the desired balance between outside work and homework, local volunteer activities, etc? (Sample size=3,502, multiple answer)

Women

Women should devote themselves to work rather than housework or local activities	3.9%
Women should participate in housework or local activities, but work has priority	21.2%
Housework or local activities and work should have similar importance	37.1%
Women should participate in work, but housework or local activities has priority	20.6%
Women should devote themselves to housework or local activities rather than work	11.2%
Don’t know	6.0%

Men

Men should devote themselves to work rather than housework or local activities	27.4%
Men should participate in housework or local activities, but work has priority	41.1%
Housework or local activities and work should have similar importance	23.1%
Men should participate in work, but housework or local activities has priority	3.7%
Men should devote themselves to housework or local activities rather than work	0.9%
Don’t know	3.8%

Again there was very little significant differences between the male and female answers to this question.

Q10: Currently, how is your balance between outside work and homework, local volunteer activities, etc? (Sample size=3,502)

	All	Female N=1,886	Male N=1,626
I devote myself to work rather than housework or local activities	19.6%	11.1%	29.5%
I participate in housework or local activities, but work has priority	21.4%	15.5%	28.3%
Housework or local activities and work have similar importance	18.6%	19.6%	17.5%
I participate in work, but housework or local activities has priority	8.2%	11.3%	4.6%
I devote myself to housework or local activities rather than work	23.8%	33.5%	12.4%
Don’t know	8.4%	9.0%	7.7%

Q11: In the future, in order than men and woman can proactively participate together with housework, child-rearing, nursing, local activities, etc, what do you think is needed? (Sample size=3,502, multiple answer)

Improve communication between husband and wife and within the home	57.8%
Men have to lose their own resistance to doing housework	44.0%
Society should value highly men who do housework, child-rearing, nursing, local activities, etc.	38.2%
Shorten working hours and increase holidays, etc., so people can have more time outside work	30.2%
Old folk, neighbours, etc., should respect the way the husband and wife have allocated tasks	26.6%
Spread information to enlighten men to heighten their interest in housework, child-rearing, nursing, local activities, etc.	24.8%
Women have to lose their resistance to letting men participate in housework	18.2%
Promote the establishment of a network for men who carry out child-rearing, nursing, local activities, etc.	16.0%
Establish a point of contact for men with problems balancing work and housework, local activities, etc.	15.4%
National and local government should research means of increasing men’s ability to do housework, child-rearing, nursing, etc.	12.9%
Other	0.9%
Nothing in particular is needed	7.3%

Q12: Which of the following words have you heard or seen? (Sample size=3,502, multiple answer)

Word (日本語)	Reading	English	Heard the term
男女共同参画社会	だんじょきょうどうさんかくかい	Gender-equal Society	52.5%
女子差別撤廃条約	じょせいさべつてっぱいじょうやく	Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women	32.8%
ジティブ・アクション		Positive action (English word adopted into Japanese)	15.8%
ポジェンダー		Gender (English word adopted into Japanese)	22.3%
Never heard or seen any of them			29.2%
Don’t know			3.8%

Q13: In order to form a gender-equal society, what do you think the government should put effort into doing? (Sample size=3,502, multiple answer)

Establish infant, old folk, and infirm people’s nursing facilities and services	49.7%
Conduct a review of laws and institutions	38.2%
Make everyone aware of treating men and women equally in the workplace	37.7%
Increase the opportunities for women to work, and in order to encourage women to enter fields with few women, implement sufficient workplace training and eduction	37.5%
Establish education systems at schools and for lifelong learning in society regarding gender equality, mutual understanding and cooperation	32.9%
Proactively promote policy making for women	28.2%
Develop female leaders for all kinds of organisations	19.8%
Establish consultation and education centres for the spread of information regarding female lifestyles	19.5%
Produce publicity materials and pamphlets, etc regarding gender equality, mutual understanding and cooperation	16.7%
Promote international exchanges with women of other countries	13.0%
Other	1.5%
Nothing in particular	5.5%
Don’t know	6.4%

[part 1] [part 2]