Japan's gender-biased social security policy

Why does gender inequality, or a gendered division of labour, persist in Japan? The focus of this paper is a set of policies adopted by the Japanese government in the 1980s which present an intriguing set of continuities and discontinuities in gender roles and their re-definition. Changes were represented by a set of policies to rectify gender inequality such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Law of 1985, a school curriculum reform and a revision of the Citizenship Law. Continuity was represented by a social security reform which aimed at a reconstruction of the 'Japanese family' in which families (read women), rather than the government, would shoulder the burden of care which had been shifted from the public sector. This article analyses these conflicting trends in terms of foreign pressure, division within the bureaucracy, the nature of the issues, the rise of neo-liberalism, election results and the gender bias of the ruling party.