Dr. Mariko Bando gives a presentation on gender.

On February 9, 2009, a delegation from Showa Women's University (Japan) visited and worked at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities - VNU. After the meeting with the school's leaders, Dr. Mariko Bando - Principal - gave a presentation to students of the Faculty of Oriental Studies on the current issues of women and gender inequality in Japan.

A question often asked when talking about gender issues in Japan: It seems that Japanese women do not appear much in important positions in the government and organizations and agencies in Japan? In response to this question, Dr. Mariko gave a series of numbers: 50.8% of the Japanese population are women, 41% of current employees are women, 9.4% of the lower house are women, there are 2 female ministers out of 17 ministers in the cabinet, 1/3 of doctors are women and women make up 1/4 of lawyers. If we look at these figures, the percentage of women participating in government work is not high, but the percentage of women working in non-governmental organizations and in other social activities is quite large. Currently, among managers and human resources workers in Japan, there is still a fear and lack of appreciation for female workers. They believe that girls will have to get married and have children at some point, so they cannot devote themselves to their work. Therefore, women are often not assigned important jobs and positions. On the other hand, society still places a heavy emphasis on women's responsibilities towards their families and children. It is believed that women should sacrifice their careers and other personal freedoms to focus on a more important task of creating, nurturing, training the next generation, and taking care of family work. Men focus on developing their careers. This social division of labor is accepted as a matter of course, even for women. Dr. Mariko also commented that Japanese men are the laziest housewives in the world. Only 10% of men admit to helping their wives with housework compared to the rate in European countries of 30%, especially in Sweden, where the figure is 40%.

In recent years, the Japanese government has made many adjustments to the legal system to create more favorable conditions for women in their work as well as participating in many other social activities. For example: adding more preferential conditions on time and salary during pregnancy, building more nurseries so that women can leave their children and return to work soon. Even a goal of the Japanese government is that by 2020, 30% of central and local leaders will be women. Society has also become more open-minded and appreciates the position of women in social work. That also makes today's girls more confident and have more conditions to express their abilities and personalities.

At the end of the presentation, Dr. Mariko also received many questions from students interested in a number of issues: love and marriage of young people in the past and present, division of labor between men and women in the family, the concept of women's careers in modern society, manifestations of gender inequality in Japanese society today...