March 8, 2025
Akahata editorial
Mimosas hitting the shelves of flower shops usher in the coming of International Women’s Day. This year’s International Women’s Day on March 8 marks the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the 40th anniversary of Japan’s ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).
The World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995, which brought together about 50,000 participants from all over the world, has since greatly accelerated global efforts in the field of gender equality. On the 30th anniversary, UN Women called on the world to: [f]ight relentlessly for women’s and girls’ full range of human rights, challenging all forms of violence, discrimination, and exploitation; [a]ddress systemic barriers, dismantle patriarchy, transform entrenched inequities, and elevate the voices of marginalized women and girls, including young people, to ensure inclusivity and empowerment; and [r]edefine power structures by ensuring inclusive access to education, employment, leadership, and decision-making spaces.
Acceleration is what Japan needs
Japan ranks 118th out of 146 countries in regard to women’s rights, according to the Global Gender Gap Index 2024. It is precisely Japan that needs to take action in the aforementioned three key areas: [a]dvance women’s and girls’ rights; [p]romote gender equality; and [f]oster empowerment.
Despite the continuation of sexual assaults by U.S. military personnel in Okinawa where U.S. military bases are concentrated, the Japanese government does not protect the dignity of female victims and does not even call for a revision of the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). Japan is the only country in the world that continues to force the same surname on married couples by law. The percentage of women in the House of Representatives is 15.7%, up only seven percentage points from the Lower House election in 1946 when women exercised their right to vote for the first time. Again, it is precisely Japan that needs to accelerate its efforts to realize gender equality.
Prices have been rising for more than three years, giving a blow to the livelihoods of the vulnerable, including women and children. The poverty rate among elderly women living alone in Japan is 44.1%. Some of them cannot even afford to buy basic staples.
According to a survey of single-mother households conducted by a national council of single-mother support groups, as of last summer, 40% of the families “sometimes cannot afford to buy an adequate amount of rice.” As much as 26% of households of a mother and a child spent less than 20,000 yen per month for food which amounts to a budget of 100 yen per meal.
Address root causes to eliminate poverty
To correct gender inequality in wages and employment, which are root causes of women’s poverty, is literally a vital task along with other urgent measures which need to be implemented such as consumption tax cuts and pension benefit increases.
The government is working on the Sixth Basic Plan for Gender Equality. The Japanese Communist Party on March 5 made a representation to the Cabinet Office, demanding that the government “take seriously the concluding observations of the UN CEDAW and swiftly lift women’s rights to international levels to achieve gender equality in Japan.” The JCP hopes that many women’s advocacy groups in their gender-equality campaigns will make use of the CEDAW recommendations.
The issue of peace is also a major theme of International Women’s Day. In order to put an end to the bloodshed in Ukraine, it is important to press the Ishiba government to encourage the U.S. Trump administration to mediate the Russo-Ukrainian war from the standpoint of a “just peace” based on the UN Charter and international law. It is also important to urge the government to conduct “diplomacy to create a movement toward building true peace in East Asia, not seek military spending of 8.7 trillion yen” and “sign and ratify the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).”
A variety of events related to International Women’s Day will take place in various locations in Japan this year. The success of these events will become an impetus for promotion of gender equality accelerators.
Mimosas hitting the shelves of flower shops usher in the coming of International Women’s Day. This year’s International Women’s Day on March 8 marks the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the 40th anniversary of Japan’s ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).
The World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995, which brought together about 50,000 participants from all over the world, has since greatly accelerated global efforts in the field of gender equality. On the 30th anniversary, UN Women called on the world to: [f]ight relentlessly for women’s and girls’ full range of human rights, challenging all forms of violence, discrimination, and exploitation; [a]ddress systemic barriers, dismantle patriarchy, transform entrenched inequities, and elevate the voices of marginalized women and girls, including young people, to ensure inclusivity and empowerment; and [r]edefine power structures by ensuring inclusive access to education, employment, leadership, and decision-making spaces.
Acceleration is what Japan needs
Japan ranks 118th out of 146 countries in regard to women’s rights, according to the Global Gender Gap Index 2024. It is precisely Japan that needs to take action in the aforementioned three key areas: [a]dvance women’s and girls’ rights; [p]romote gender equality; and [f]oster empowerment.
Despite the continuation of sexual assaults by U.S. military personnel in Okinawa where U.S. military bases are concentrated, the Japanese government does not protect the dignity of female victims and does not even call for a revision of the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). Japan is the only country in the world that continues to force the same surname on married couples by law. The percentage of women in the House of Representatives is 15.7%, up only seven percentage points from the Lower House election in 1946 when women exercised their right to vote for the first time. Again, it is precisely Japan that needs to accelerate its efforts to realize gender equality.
Prices have been rising for more than three years, giving a blow to the livelihoods of the vulnerable, including women and children. The poverty rate among elderly women living alone in Japan is 44.1%. Some of them cannot even afford to buy basic staples.
According to a survey of single-mother households conducted by a national council of single-mother support groups, as of last summer, 40% of the families “sometimes cannot afford to buy an adequate amount of rice.” As much as 26% of households of a mother and a child spent less than 20,000 yen per month for food which amounts to a budget of 100 yen per meal.
Address root causes to eliminate poverty
To correct gender inequality in wages and employment, which are root causes of women’s poverty, is literally a vital task along with other urgent measures which need to be implemented such as consumption tax cuts and pension benefit increases.
The government is working on the Sixth Basic Plan for Gender Equality. The Japanese Communist Party on March 5 made a representation to the Cabinet Office, demanding that the government “take seriously the concluding observations of the UN CEDAW and swiftly lift women’s rights to international levels to achieve gender equality in Japan.” The JCP hopes that many women’s advocacy groups in their gender-equality campaigns will make use of the CEDAW recommendations.
The issue of peace is also a major theme of International Women’s Day. In order to put an end to the bloodshed in Ukraine, it is important to press the Ishiba government to encourage the U.S. Trump administration to mediate the Russo-Ukrainian war from the standpoint of a “just peace” based on the UN Charter and international law. It is also important to urge the government to conduct “diplomacy to create a movement toward building true peace in East Asia, not seek military spending of 8.7 trillion yen” and “sign and ratify the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).”
A variety of events related to International Women’s Day will take place in various locations in Japan this year. The success of these events will become an impetus for promotion of gender equality accelerators.
