Blog Japan: Look to Scandinavia to repair your “birth machines”
January 30th, 2007Japanese health minister Hakuo Yanagisawa is facing massive criticism after referring to women as “birth giving machines”. He deserves the rap.
But, dear Mr. Yanagisawa, why don’t you just look to Scandinavia to find out how to make it better for families with children?
You see, Mr. Yanagisawa, families are no factories, and women are no machines.
End of discussion.
But Japan has a huge problem, I will give you that: The birth rate is down to 1,26 children per woman, far below what is needed to sustain the size of the population. With this birth rate, the population will be older and older. And of course: The number of working citizens to pay for the old will decrease.
The solution is actually pretty simple:
But your medicine, Mr. Yanagisawa, is wrong. Whether you use the word “birth machines” or not, just encouraging women to have more children is not going to work.
You have to ask why they don’t want to have children.
I am no expert on Japan, Mr. Yanagisawa, but from what I do know I am pretty sure that one answer is that it is almost impossible to combine a career with being a mother. At least that is what Japanese women told me when I visited your country as a journalist a few years back.
So what is the problem? You need more people to work and you need more babies. There is only one medicine for that, Mr. Yanagisawa: Make it much easier for women in your country to continue their career after giving birth.
That is why I ask you to look to Scandinavia, Mr. Yanagisawa.
Take my own country, Norway, for instance. It is not perfect in any sense, and we do not have full equality of the sexes yet. But it has become very common for women to continue working after they have children, even at managerial lever. And also men are expected to live up to their duties as father.
This is the result of firm policies from politicians like you, Mr. Yanagisawa. Like the following:
These are just a few of the policies.
And I am thinking, Mr. Yanagisawa, that something like this would be a very smart investment for your country. Couldn’t you imagine that more women would find it attractive to have children if giving birth did not automatically mean that they had to stop working? And wouldn’t it actually be of great economic benefit to your country if more women participated in the working life?
These are just questions on my part, Mr. Yanagisawa.
Maybe you will have some answers when you are done apologizing for your “birth machine” remarks?
John Einar Sandvand
Editor, Asia Observer - your portal to Asia
January 31st, 2007 at 9:41 pm
Very good points, John. Japan really needs to get its act together on this issue. Laura
February 1st, 2007 at 7:49 am
Yeah I agree. The working woman is unable to add to her family because of the lack of support.
Even in India we do not have many of the facilities that Norway has. Three months maternity leave and no paternity leave at all. The kids when born are left with their grandparents as we usually live in joint families.
Since the shift to nuclear families is on the rise many women are opting out of families and prefer to work on their careers instead. India though will not mind as that will reduce their ever growing population.
Sim
February 8th, 2007 at 5:22 am
Great in theory, but I worry that the problem is much more ingrained culturally and a few government measures won’t change the situation much.
There would need to be a wholesale change in the image of women in the workplace for the measures to be effective. A friend of mine who is a working mother recently got pregnant with her 2nd child. Her manager laughed at her about how she is not a teenager anymore and what is she doing getting herself pregnant in her position. She’s 39…
However, in the end, the problem of declining birth-rates is common in most rich industralised nations and with the extreme population density in Japan, I don’t see the big problem if the population decreases slightly. Sure, there will need to be a solution to the Pensions issue, but government has plenty of ways to raise cash for that (Sales tax, less needless road construction).
February 8th, 2007 at 5:39 am
Japan: Look to Scandinavia?…
John Sandvand writes about some possible solutions to Japan’s birth rate “problem”, using Norway as an example…….
February 8th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
The experience in Scandinavia is that clear political actions over time will change the attitudes of people. For instance there were no lack of objections when four weeks of the “maternity” leave were reserved for the father. Over time, though, it contributed to make it much easier for men to choose to stay home with their children. Today it is quite common that men stay up to several months at home taking care of the children.
These changes take long time, but brave political measures will speed it up.
And in Japan it would be smart for economic reasons also …
John