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‘To Shine’ or ‘To Die’?: ‘Womenomics’ and Women’s Worth to the Economy in Neoliberal Japan

日期 : 2020-09-14

You are cordially invited to join the Fall 2020 series of Wednesday Gender Seminars, co-presented by Gender Studies Programme & Gender Research Centre, CUHK.

Title: ‘To Shine’ or ‘To Die’?: ‘Womenomics’ and Women’s Worth to the Economy in Neoliberal Japan
Date: 23 Sept 2020 (Wed)
Time: 12:30 - 2:00pm
Registration: http://bit.ly/wedseminar_sept23 (Zoom link will be provided to registered participants)
Speaker: Prof. HO Swee-Lin (Associate Professor of Anthropology, Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore)
Moderator: Prof. SONG Jing (Assistant Professor, Gender Studies Programme, The Chinese University of Hong Kong)

Abstract: This seminar presents the challenges experienced by women with professional careers in Japan that have been intensified by Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s ‘womenomics’ programme. As an ideological tool for economic growth, ‘womenomics’ compounds existing problems relating to gender inequality; reinforces women’s inferior role in the corporate workplace as peripheral, non-core players; and exacerbates women’s marginal position in Japanese society. The popular media in Japan still portray career women disparagingly, while after-work drinking becomes a necessity for women managers – though at their own time and expense – to manage disharmonious relations with subordinates and protect their career. Furthermore, Japan’s antiquated labour laws allow employers to utilise nominal management by promoting workers with enhanced job titles and additional workload, but limited increase in remuneration or authority. With weak labour unions in Japan offering workers limited access to collective representations and little protection against unfair or abusive practices, new legislations to combat workplace bullying and harassment ironically become novel justifications for employers to discriminate against workers. The risks and challenges faced by women pursuing management-track careers have generated conflicts in their lives and aggravated their precarious conditions, with serious ramifications on their emotional and psychological health, as well as social relations and senses of the self.

Speaker's Biography: Swee-Lin Ho is Associate Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology at the National University of Singapore. Her research interests encompass the neoliberal transformations of work, friendship practices; the urban night economy; ethnographic field methods and ‘studying up;’ globalization of East Asian popular culture; corporate cultures; social formations of gender; the political economy of Western classical music; and global food cultures. She worked for many years in various countries as auditor, financial journalist and corporate executive before completing her graduate studies at Sophia University and later the University of Oxford. She has taught in South Korea, where she was also Korea Foundation Research Fellow studying the globalization of Korean popular culture and changing notions of gender, work, family, nationhood and cultural identity. Her recent publications include Friendship and Work Culture of Women Managers in Japan: Tokyo After Ten (2018), and Women Managers in Neoliberal Japan: Gender, Precarious Labour and Everyday Lives (2020).




For enquiries, please contact the Gender Studies Programme at
Tel: 3943-1026; Email: genderstudies@cuhk.edu.hk Website: www.gender.cuhk.edu.hk