02. From Japan: April 2004 Archives

s051470: Shimizu, Yudai [CGS NewsLetter 001]

Introduction
On the plenary session of Diet held on July 10, 2003, the ruling and opposition parties voted unanimously to pass the "Special Law on Gender Identity Disorder" that would allow people with gender identity disorder to change their officially registered gender in their family registries under certain conditions. This law will go to effect from July 16 of this year. In this article, the author will give a brief introduction on the enactment process and the content of the law, and point out the problems of it in order to clarify the relations between the GID patients and law as well as society.

ICU Student: KUBOTA, Hiroyuki [CGS NewsLetter 001]

To bridge the gap between Gender Studies and Legal Science, the First Annual Conference of Gender Legal Studies was held at Waseda University, Tokyo, on December 6th and 7th of 2003. A large number of judical practitioners, scholars and sociologists participated and discussed legal issues through gender perspectives. I saw the possibility of the newly emerged Gender Legal Studies.

s051470: Shimizu, Yudai, i052005: Kubota, Hiroyuki [CGS NewsLetter 001]

The lawsuit of Sumitomo Electric Industries Ltd., a widely watched women's labor suite over the Equal Employment Opportunity Law, reached an out-of-court settlement in January 2004 with an overall victory of the plaintiffs. And it is considered a landmark for the women's labor issue as far as the content of the settlement is concerned. In this lawsuit, two female employees of Sumitomo Electric Industries sue the firm, alleging it discriminated against women in terms of pay and promotion, as well as the government, who had turned down the mediation. They had demanded a compensation of some 160 million yen, including the salary difference between them and male employees who had worked at the firm for the same length of time.

Humanities: Miyasaka, Natsumi [CGS NewsLetter 001]

TV drama is an interesting research material, especially for those scholars of gender expression in fiction like myself. Stating this as an excuse, I habitually watch popular TV dramas, both Japanese and foreign, and I cannot help noticing the huge difference that lies between Japanese and English (or American) dramas. The latter, reflecting social maturity perhaps, seldom contains the old gender-stereotype. For instance, they do not differentiate any occupation by sex. We see male and female lawyers fighting evenly in a courtroom. There are as many female doctors as male ones, and male nurses as female ones. We see a couple with a wife as an office worker and a husband as a homemaker. Whether or not these images sincerely mirror the actual situation in society is another issue. At least, these dramas do not impose on women negative images as their role models through such a public and influential media as TV.