Being women in Japan, 1970–2000

Abstract

The women’s liberation movement in the United States of the late 1960s and early 1970s had more than a ripple effect on women in Japan as well as other countries like Australia. In most Japanese families the husband hands over his pay packet to his wife who then gives him ‘an allowance’ for pocket money and generally takes charge of the day-today management of the household’s activities and expenses. The home and domestic responsibilities have been the centre of Japanese women’s activities since the 1890s, but being ‘good wives and wise mothers’ was not in fact the ‘traditional’ ideal for women. Japanese mothers have been given the entire responsibility for their children’s success in this competition, and for most women who live in urban areas this is carried out without help from the extended family. Television, also a pervasive source of role models for women, provides another reason for feminists’ pessimism. Although.