Women in general, and working mothers in particular, occupy a strategic position in Japan’s welfare capitalism. In order to generate economic growth amid the shrinking labor force, policy makers have recognized the importance of pushing women into the labor market. At the same time, the low birth rate has propelled them to pursue work-life balance policy as well as childcare policy. Recently, “womenomics” discourse also penetrated into growth strategy, which justifies positive action measures. Nevertheless, these seemingly working-women friendly polices have not yielded concrete result.
My paper asks why numerous women friendly policies are at best schizophrenic, if not contradictory with each other. More broadly, it seeks how gender inequality has persisted in Japan, identifying the position of women in policy discourses and partisan debate.
I focus on the blending of neoliberalism and statist family ideology held by the dominant party, Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which I label “neoliberal motherhood” to explain Japan’s schizophrenic policy response. Women’s body is objectified in the neoliberal project as well as in the statist family ideology.
Neoliberalism is gender-neutral in itself, expanding opportunities for women in paid work, yet serves to stratify women thereby producing poor women on a massive scale. Statist family ideology legitimatizes the state’s control of family formation as well as precludes the family from becoming a burden to the state. What it protects is motherhood, not actual mothers, as self-sacrifice is the essence of motherhood in their thinking.
Enlargement of the working poor caused by neoliberal labor and welfare policy created a fertile soil for the discourse of statist family ideology to be accepted. Although neoliberalism and motherhood might appear at odds with each other, the common thread that ties them up—the objectified women—permits their strange marriage.
