Gender equality and decent work

Abstract

After an arduous fight, the protection of women’s rights as international human rights is finally considered a given within the international community. Gender equality and women’s right to work have become an integral part of the United Nations’ (UN) human rights’ agenda, also incorporated respectively as Goals 5 and 8 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, a wide gap between states’ commitment and their compliance with this framework and other legal instruments remains. This is the case in Japan, where state rhetoric and efforts towards gender equality have not been translated into reality. In this chapter, I first introduce the history of Goals 5 and 8, including support for and criticisms of these goals. Then, I analyse the connection between gender equality and decent work, using the hybrid ‘spiral model’ framework, seen through a feminist approach and complemented by theories of norm localisation and types of socialisation, to look into how the adoption of the related SDGs and other international instruments have influenced the processes of diffusing and implementing women’s right to work in Japanese society. By using concrete examples, I suggest why Japan’s persistently lacking levels of commitment and compliance remain, and how the situation can be improved.