On Sunday, April 16th, I attended the 2005 Japan Forum on Feminist Economy held at Tokyo Gakugei University.
There were two parts to the forum. The first part featured reports on various issues - for example, foreign workers in domestic and social care services, working hours for paid- and unpaid- labour, a re-examination of capitalism, and research on the idea of household budgets. The second part of the forum consisted of reports on the common topic for this year, the feminist economic analysis of the declining birth rate. This topic was selected after the release of the '2004 Social Report on the Declining Birth Rate', in which it was revealed that Japan has only until the year 2010 to recover its birth rate or birth numbers. The aim of the forum was to acquire a new perspective of the situation and to make proposals for policy implications by means of a feminist economic analysis of the causes and effects of the declining birth rate and its possible countermeasures.