ABSTRACT
A welfare state, like a gender culture, is not an immediate factor that affects women’s legislative representation, but it is the basis for women’s activities outside of the home. By exploring the three policy areas—care work, tax and social insurance schemes, and working styles—Chapter 4 expounds the Japanese welfare state where women are induced to leave the labor market and the realm of politics; thus, I define it as a gender-biased welfare state. The gender-biased welfare state is sustained by a social expectation that women should give priority to child raising over full-time labor. This expectation confuses Japanese women and diminishes their enthusiasm for working. On the one hand, motherhood is conceived as incompatible with the Japanese workplace. Japanese men, on the other hand, are requested to devote their life to the workplace. Women legislators also suffer greater hardship in Japan’s gender-biased welfare state. They are forced to assimilate into male-defined “universal” norms and customs in politics.
