Bloomberg Journalist Marika Katanuma joins us to discuss the ways in which Japan's gender inequality has created a bleak financial outlook for Japan's women, and the government's quick and decisive action to talk about thinking about what to do.
Ollie recommends a river cruise that, seriously, you guys, he was only on for the purposes of the review.
Bobby checks out Japan's only river cruise themed love hotel with his wife and another guy.
Topics discussed on this episode range from:
- A great way to stop yourself from getting so good at Japanese that it's bad for your mental health
- What Marika thinks is a personal upside to the Western media paying attention to gender equality issues
- Mori-kaicho's sexist remarks and the debatable sincerity of his apology
- How the idea of Japanese women "knowing their place" sparked online movements
- What Marika has in common with the new Olympic President
- The LDP meeting where women should be seen and not heard
- What Marika thinks can be done to help solve some of the problems of underrepresentation
- JBRC Press Club Correspondents @tokyo_lie and @stuartotwit follow up on yet another antiquated gender issue around married couples not being able to keep their birth names
- Why the pandemic has disproportionately affected women's employment
- The chicken-egg effect with how Japanese cultural ideas of women's roles contribute to government policies that negatively affect women/force them into those roles
- How Womenomics tried to incentivize women into the workforce as it simultaneously incentivized them to stay out or to work less
- An unfortunate misunderstanding of the Japanese for wive's being "dependent"
- Why the policies that don't work now were established in the first place, and the problem with not having the people you're creating policy for represented in the policy creation
- How the financial burden on young couples exacerbates the declining birthrate
- Suga's ambitions to boost that birth rate by paying newly married couples, and to fund infertility treatment
- Why policies that are supposed to achieve gender equality don't get fully utilized or well realized
- Why the childcare industry/babysitting industry in Japan has not yet been a good solution for giving women better ability to work
- The poverty rate in Japan, and why women are more in danger of running out of money as they age
- If it's a problem that the leadership is substantially older
- What Marika sees in terms of gender equality and social/political issues with the younger generations and how persistent the cultural ideas of gender roles have proving to be
- The "joshi ryoku" bullshit that equates female with domestic
- A ridiculous survey that would be like asking "Do you think that it is, or will be Saturday?"
Get access to the extras by supporting the podcast for less than $1 an episode by becoming a member at http://buymeacoffee.com.
Topics discussed on the extras include:
- How and why the US was basically Marika's "safety school."
- Marika's ice skating career, and how she pivoted from athletics to academics after an injury
- How to put yourself into a immersion situation and why some people can't/don't
- The backwards mentality around learning a language
- If the injured athlete not having anything else to fall back on trope is the same in Japan, and how Marika exploited her position as a rare type of athlete
- How and why Marika ended up being a journalist
- The last name issue in the news, and why some women want to keep their birth names after marriage, and why the Japanese government doesn't want to let them
- How the tradition of the average Japanese people even having surnames is historically recent
- Japanese concepts about blood-relation, and family bonds that strike us as CRAZY
- What kind of media training journalists go through and what JBRC is competing against when we have a journalist on the show.
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Content Links:
Marika's Work on Bloomberg
Social Media Links:
Marika Katanuma: Twitter
Ollie Horn: Twitter | Instagram
Bobby Judo: Twitter | Instagram | YouTube
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