Chiiki Shakai ni okeru Josei to Seiji (Women and Politics in Local Society)

Abstract

The chief contribution of Ōyama Nao and Kunihiro Yōko’s Chiiki Shakai ni okeru Josei to Seiji is a combination survey and interview study of members of local assemblies in Kanagawa Prefecture that allows them to describe patterns of gender difference between male and female representatives, giving readers access to thought-provoking data on the kinds of changes that women’s growing political presence may be bringing to Japanese politics. The book begins with two chapters summarizing the general shape of women’s engagement with politics following the extension of female suffrage during the Occupation through the rapid increase in women’s candidacies and elections to local assemblies that began in the 1990s. Most of the rest of text explores the results of the authors’ study of assembly members. They sent surveys to 829 assembly members and received responses from 70% or 41.9% of the women, and 236% or 35.6% of the men (71). Then, choosing localities for the variations in their assembly members’ gender representation—towns where women hold more than half of the seats and towns where women hold as few as a single seat—the authors conducted open-ended interviews with women assembly members and with women who had previously held a seat but were no longer assembly members.