The irony of globalization: The experience of Japanese women in British higher education

Abstract

Informal interviews and ethnographic research are usedto identify the motivations of Japanese women to studyin Britain, and to examine their experience asstudents as well as peripheral members of the laborforce. It is found that Japanese women's motivationsto come to Britain to study are encouraged by theforces of globalization, including economic, culturaland intellectual factors. Women are also pushed tostudy abroad by domestic factors, as although Japanhas developed an egalitarian education system for bothsexes, women still encounter conservative social normswhich constrain their lives and limit their jobprospects. Japanese women's experiences of highereducation in Britain are mixed. Some women feel thattheir presence is merely tolerated and that they arenot encouraged in their academic endeavours. Othersfind British higher education gives them theopportunity to develop their critical faculties and tobecome integrated into the life of the institution. These mixed responses are indicative of thecontradictory consequences of globalization ineducation. Globalization has helped to give neweducational opportunities to Japanese women. However,it has also created an international recruitmentmarket in which some higher education institutionsview students in financial terms and not as members ofa scholarly community. One of the ironies ofglobalization, therefore, is that the mutualeducational advantages of cross cultural contact areundermined by a reductive, narrowly economic view offoreign students as a source of revenue.