Geography Reference
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will swallow everything up
. Women may therefore deliberately leave certain
things for men to do, and be less concerned with their male counterparts
being seen to take on the more conspicuous roles such as giving the
'
nal
guidance at a meeting, since otherwise men may feel they have no role to
play, which women do not want to see.
Changing patriarchal attitudes without changing the wider system indeed
could mean more women getting stuck in tedious jobs with few prospects.
Still, most young women I spoke to wanted to work and to change the sexist
attitudes among men that they felt still existed. Once, when I was having
lunch with the administrative staff
of Soka University, Mika, who viewed
Japanese men
s attitudes towards women as often arrogant and patronising,
told of her recent experience with a male colleague and superior. One day, in
a conversation with the head of her unit, he had talked about how he con-
sidered giving 10 more years to work for Soka University as a real contribu-
tion to k
-
sen-rufu. She was happy to hear this as she enjoyed working there
and hoped her work contributed, however indirectly, to society. During this
conversation, it came up that Mika might get married. Obviously having
assumed that she was not going to get married, perhaps because she was in
her early thirties and as yet unmarried, the man told her that the 10 years of
course meant in the case that she should remain single. There seemed to be
little doubt in his mind that getting married meant an automatic end to her
job. This also had been the expectation of her ex-boyfriend, who had given up
on waiting for her to stop working. Mika felt frustrated that her boss found
himself the better judge of what she regarded as her personal choice.
Depending on how widespread such sentiments are among men in Japan
and among the male membership of Soka Gakkai, and on how far they are
able to challenge them, young women such as Hiromi and Mika may feel
ambivalent concerning their organisation and their Soka Gakkai environment
living up to Ikeda
'
. Yet, while they may opt
out of marriage altogether, they are unlikely to give up trying to change
things around them. They know the picture is a mixed one. Taking Soka
University, female students told both of male lecturers who would (con-
sciously or not) speak in a gender-speci
'
s rhetoric of
'
respect for women
'
c (and disdainful) manner about the
role of women in their lectures, while others used speci
c examples to bring
up gender politics and issues of equality. I had seen examples of both ways of
thinking when I studied Japanese at SU in 2001
02. The head of the
Department of Social Sciences and another male lecturer would bring in
articles dealing with gender stereotyping and work
-
-
life balance issues. When I
inquired about one of the lecturers
own wife, he said that he would not at all
mind his wife working but that his wife
'
s parents, who were from an old tra-
ditional family, had made their daughter promise when she married him that
she would never take up paid work. Apparently due to this promise she never
worked, although she was a
'
leader in Soka Gakkai. However, I
also came across an example of the other
'
full-time
'
, who insinuated rather inno-
cently, seemingly unaware of what he was doing, about the traits of
'
type
'
'
good
'
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