1. Researching Gender And Childcare In Contemporary Asia

Abstract

This book focuses on family and gender, taking a comparative approach to investigating their current characteristics and conditions as well as changes in response to modernization and globalization in contemporary Asia. The purpose of this research project is to reveal on an empirical basis the complex changes in gender roles Asian people are currently undergoing and to explore both the varieties and commonalities of trajectories of change among those societies. To investigate the process of gender role changes, we focus on the role of the mother because our hypothesis is that the crucial factor behind a change in gender roles is a change in caretaking practices, especially towards children. The caretaking role was at the center of women's role in modern societies in the West. Research on modernization and gender underwent major theoretical change in Europe and the United States in the 1970s and in Japan in the 1980s. Keywords: caretaking role; contemporary Asia; globalization; modernization