"Womenomics" : The Political and Economic Policies for Women's Emancipation?

Abstract: Although there has been substantial progress toward gender equality, great disparities still persist. Across the globe, women face widespread gender gaps in the division of household responsibilities, economic resources, limited access to educational opportunities, and legal and political barriers to political power. Japan is one of the countries that has been falling behind, and has for several years been facing criticism from major international organisations for the persistent gender gaps in its economy, politics, and society. Furthermore, Japan has for a long time been influenced by Confucian tradition where the emphasis has been on strong gender norms and division. In 2013, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe launched new economic policies to restart and stimulate Japan’s economic growth. He encourages an increase of active inclusion of women’s participation, and his policies came to be widely known as “Womenomics”. The ambition of this paper is to discover Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s view on women’s role in his new policies, and to conduct a dimension analysis on “Womenomics”. The analysis is based on the theoretical framework of Confucianism and Liberal Feminism, to see whether one can discover elements of Confucianism and/or Liberal Feminism in “Womenomics”. The results indicate that the prime minister consider women’s role mostly in regards to economics, and the policies and the view on women’s role are foremost aligned with the political ideas of Liberal Feminism.