The Japan Association of Gender Law (JAGL) hosted an academic conference in snowy Sendai on December 3 and 4, 2005. This is the third year for the association, which was founded in 2003 with the aim of providing a bridge between practicing members and researchers in the law community. This year, people from diverse fields - law researchers, lawyers, judicial scriveners, researchers of social science or judicial social science, and NGO workers - who share a common interest in issues of gender and law, gathered together in Tohoku (northern Japan) to engage in various sessions of heated discussion. I have participated in this conference from the start as a member of The Gender Law Network, a national network of students of gender and law. This year, I was particularly interested in individual reports on the second day by two young researchers whose approaches were exciting both in theory and in practice. Yet I also felt that the two days of the conference raised a number of issues to be addressed in terms of bridging the gap between practitioners and researchers in the academic sphere.
The Japan Association of Gender Law (JAGL) hosted an academic conference in snowy Sendai on December 3 and 4, 2005. This is the third year for the association, which was founded in 2003 with the aim of providing a bridge between practicing members and researchers in the law community. This year, people from diverse fields - law researchers, lawyers, judicial scriveners, researchers of social science or judicial social science, and NGO workers - who share a common interest in issues of gender and law, gathered together in Tohoku (northern Japan) to engage in various sessions of heated discussion. I have participated in this conference from the start as a member of The Gender Law Network, a national network of students of gender and law. This year, I was particularly interested in individual reports on the second day by two young researchers whose approaches were exciting both in theory and in practice. Yet I also felt that the two days of the conference raised a number of issues to be addressed in terms of bridging the gap between practitioners and researchers in the academic sphere.
On the first afternoon, Ms Hashimoto Hiroko (Jumonji University) presented a report on 'The Gender Equality Policy: an Analysis of Policy Application in Regional Government', which reviewed the local legislations on GEP from the viewpoint of social science. This was followed by a discussion session with NGO workers on the panel. Reports were given on the practical abolition of several progressive GEP regional regulations through regional mergers that had taken place in the so-called 'Heisei regional reorganization', a national merger program. These regulations, which were achieved through the efforts of civilian groups, were simply dropped when their local bodies merged with others. Other discussion topics included the backlash against the 'gender-free'' movement, one example of which is a group called 'Josei Juku' headed by Lower House member Eriko Yamatani. The group advocates traditional feminine values such as 'the merit of housewives' or 'the value of domesticity' in parliament. This made me question the effectiveness of quantitative objectives such as increasing the female ratio of members in Parliament or in managerial positions alone.
On the second day, two young researchers presented individual reports in the morning session. Ms. Yoshiyo Onishi (Hosei University) spoke on "Women's Human Rights and Subject-oriented Human Rights Protection" and Ms. Mamiko Yoshikawa spoke on "Engendering Due-process - Procedures for Arresting Perpetrators of Domestic Violence". Both were dynamic reports which extended the horizon of gender law research. They analyzed actual cases of domestic violence or sexual harassment which breached women's human rights in attempt to redefine terms such as 'resolution', 'support', and 'due process' that are generally considered as a priori in current theories of law.
Onishi's report considered possible answers to the question of what constitutes subject-oriented human rights protection through an analysis of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), practiced by NGO or women's associations as alternative bodies to judicial system. Opening the discussion with a review of judicial power in constitutional law, it examined the background to the judicial apathy towards protecting victims, of whom women are by far the majority, in the human rights abuse cases in the domestic, educational, or work place environment that often inflict serious damage to victims. A case of sexual harassment by a male teacher which caused a female student to become a delinquent was one example. In that particular case, upon the victim's request, an NGO took the initiative by negotiating with the educational board, arranging for the victim's psychological care and securing her full and unhindered matriculation. Finally they also organized a fact-finding meeting which demanded for an apology from the offender and made an enquiry into his other possible offences. The case was concluded with an official reprimand for the offending teacher and his redundancy. It is noteworthy that a great deal of consideration was paid to, and measures taken on behalf of, the victim, which would have never been the case had the been left to the educational committee whose interests conflicted with the student's.
Yoshikawa's report looked at the 1977 Abuse Prevention Act of Oregon (APA) in relation to suggestions for the enforcement of Japanese criminal law. Her focus was on the conflict between the constitution of 'due process' and the application of the 'mandatory arrest' closure in the APA that aims at securing a victim's physical safety and makes the arrest of domestic violence perpetrators mandatory when 'probable cause' is applicable. In fact, it is very often police personnel (usually male) who arrives at a domestic violence scene after a report by a concerned neighbour and then leaves quickly after telling the couple to 'talk things over more calmly' between themselves. It is reported that in a number of such cases, the situation subsequently degenerates into an escalation of violence which sometimes culminates in the victim's death. This recognition has led several US states to make the arrest of DV perpetrators mandatory. However, this mandatory arrest has been a centre of fierce constitutional debates, as it seemingly conflicts with the constitution of 'due process', an assurance of the fairness in procedures such as arrest which involves restrictions on personal freedom, making it obligatory to notify the rights and grant hearings. Yoshikawa tries to negotiate this conflict by re-interpreting the idea of 'due process'.
The contrast in approach of the two reports was most interesting. Onishi's report supported the merits of subject-oriented conflict solution over the policy-oriented, institutionalised one, while Yoshikawa's report supported the implementation of institutional stricture on the policing system which has a record of non-committal policy in the private sphere, prioritizing a respect for the victim's will, in order to secure the uniform and forcible protection of the victim's bodily safety. It is needless to stress the importance of reclaiming initiative from an inflexible system; of equal or larger importance is a caution against the current atmosphere of appropriating the respect for the will of the concerned party as a political call to advocate the primacy of self-responsibility in cases of human rights breaches in the private sphere. Yoshikawa's perspective is also significant if viewed as a challenge against the rising paternalism in the recent neo-liberal climate that stresses self-reliance. Under a social structure in which female victims of DV are restricted to a choice between a loss of financial security by escaping from or legally prosecuting a violent partner or simply to continue enduring the violence. When such choices result in the death of the woman, I cannot help but wonder whether she should really be held responsible for her own death. The two reports suggested the theoretical and practical potentials of gender law research.
The second afternoon centered on 'A Gender Law Analysis of the Low Birth Rate: Family, Labour, and Self Determination', a symposium on topics of 1) Globalization and Reproductive Health/Rights; 2) Strategies for Coping with the Low Birth Rate; 3) the Japanese Employment System; 4) Family Regulations. It aimed at introducing alternative arguments in the current discourse on the Japanese low birth rate and its relation with the realization of gender equality in society. It aimed at redressing the reactionary response that GEL actually weakens family ties and society. Although the conference in the chilliness of Sendai concluded without incident, I could not help but question the practical effect of conference on pressing social issues, at a time when the revision of the Gender Equality Law was in its final stage. As one female lawyer has recently pointed out, the publication of case analysis papers after the instalment of a law regulation cannot have any material effect on the actual practice of the law. Drawing on the experience of law practitioners to enrich one's research is not enough. In order to serve as an effective bridge, the association should enable the provision of front-line law practitioners with the most up-to-date theoretical back-up. Arguably, this is a political engagement of the first order. Yet, it is research in gender and feminist law that has revealed the political origin of the self-declared neutrality in legal theory. We ought to ask ourselves hard what is required of the association to avoid the 'unhappy marriage' of practitioners and researchers, of merger rather than co-operation.
The fourth conference is scheduled to be held at Ochanomizu University in the winter of 2006.
Osaka University Graduate School : Hiroyuki KUBOTA