2y ago

Japan Sends Man to G7 Meeting on Women’s Empowerment

The incident highlights ongoing struggles with gender parity in Japan—which ranks lowest among G7 member states on the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index.

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2y ago

Japan Sends Male Minister to Lead G7 Meeting on Women’s Empowerment

time.com /6290088/japan-gender-equality-g7/

44 comments

When asked how he felt being the only male representative, Ogura, a Cabinet minister, said that male leaders with strong enthusiasm for gender equality are still needed,
this is true though
- It's just completely sidestepping the question IMO
  
  also true!
- They are needed in society, sure, but is he saying these men are needed to lead women in matters of gender equality?
  Because that's the thing about this that's raising eyebrows.
  
  I didn't read it like that
  I realize that might just be naïveté on my part...
  
  I mean, if genders are equal then an equal number of men and women should be leading in matters of gender equality.
  And there are real issues that stem from this. If you make it so that under-represented people always lead initiatives to improve representation, you are adding workload to the under-represented people involved in the activity (governance in this case), and making them even more under-represented in the rest of the activity.
  The optics in this case are bad enough that the downsides of sending a candidate chosen in a gender-neutral fashion outweigh the upsides, but I'd definitely advise being cautious about assuming that's always the case. If anything it's the exception, not the rule.
  
  is he saying these men are needed to lead women in matters of gender equality?
  Is he saying that???
  Because that's not what he said and it seems awfully presumptive to just twist his words into something cynical without reason.
Japan has a lot of work to do when it comes to gender equality
That's incredibly silly
Siiiiiiiiiiiigh.
Classic Japan. I’d say “don’t ever change”, but, er.
If this was a meeting on gender equality rather than female empowerment your reaction would make more sense. The two concepts are similar but different and apply to different social contexts.
Equality is a political goal, empowerment is the actions we collectively take today regardless of our patchwork of political realities. Do we need men to be the leaders of female empowerment in places where women do not yet feel even close to equal to men? Maybe this would make sense in some places, counties where women leaders are ubiquitous like New Zealand and Finland (they arent really ubuquitous , merely moreso than the rest of the world). But that's really up to the women to decide who empowers them when they feel disenfranchised by their country's establishment.
So do you think Japanese women feel inspired and empowered by this guy? Or is it better interpretiert as tonedeaf homework put forth by someone who didnt understand the assignment?
- This reminds me -
  Last year I went to a technical/professional conference where one of the highlighted topics was "Empowering Women in [Niche Technical Field X]." To my surprise, both of the speakers were men and neither had ever worked in [Technical Field X]. One was an ex-Football player. I forget what the other dude did for a living before he started the lecture circuit.
  Both had daughters, though, so that apparently qualified them to speak. The other thing that qualified them was the fact that they were both men. They explained this. They needed to speak because "no one listens to women when they whine" about inclusion or equity or how to solve concrete problems.
  The takeaway was: Want a voice at the table, ladies? Then ask a man to speak on your behalf and let them give the other men a good stern talking to. (And buy my book.)
  Yeah, allies are great. I get it, thanks. But this was just really fucking stupid.
  The conference was a mixed bag, but I left that pair a particularly blistering review on the conference feedback channel. Honestly, it was so bad that I took extra care with reviewing the other speakers just so it was clear I wasn't a troll (or an ungrateful bitch who couldn't understand that these guys were being super magnanimous).
  At least my manager got a good laugh out of the story.
Identifies as woman
- does /m/OneJoke exist yet?
  
  I'll check once I'm out of bed. If not, I'll make it.
- Where does it say that? Neither the article or his wikipedia page mention anything about that.
  
  i think this was just supposed to be a silly joke, not a factual statement
The "World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index" is pretty batshit insane. Areas were women have an advantage don't count, so it's just a manipulated answer to a loaded question.

44 comments