Mission Completed? Changing Visibility of Women’s Colleges in England and Japan and Their Roles in Promoting Gender Equality in Science |
| |
| Authors: | Naonori Kodate Kashiko Kodate Takako Kodate |
| |
| Institution: | (1) NIHR King’s Patient Safety and Service Quality Research Centre, King’s College London, London, UK;(2) Japan Science and Technology Agency, Tokyo, Japan;(3) Department of Information and Sciences, Tokyo Woman’s Christian University, Tokyo, Japan;(4) NIHR King’s Patient Safety and Service Quality Research Centre, Strand Bridge House (-2 Basement), 138-142 Strand, London, WC2R 1HH, UK |
| |
| Abstract: | The global community, from UNESCO to NGOs, is committed to promoting the status of women in science, engineering and technology,
despite long-held prejudices and the lack of role models. Previously, when equality was not firmly established as a key issue
on international or national agendas, women’s colleges played a great role in mentoring female scientists. However, now that
a concerted effort has been made by governments, the academic community and the private sector to give women equal opportunities,
the raison d’être of women’s universities seems to have become lost. This paper argues otherwise, by demonstrating that women’s universities
in Japan became beneficiaries of government initiatives since the early 2000s to reverse the low ratio of women in scientific
research. The paper underscores the importance of the reputation of women’s universities embedded in their institutional foundations,
by explaining how female scientific communities take shape in different national contexts. England, as a primary example of
a neoliberal welfare regime, with its strong emphasis on equality and diversity, promoted its gender equality policy under
the auspices of the Department of Trade and Industry. By contrast, with a strong emphasis on family values and the male-breadwinner
model, the Japanese government carefully treated the goal of supporting female scientists from the perspective of the equal
participation of both men and women rather than that of equality. Following this trend, rather contradictorily, women’s universities,
with their tradition of fostering a ‘good wife, wise mother’ image, began to be highlighted as potential gender-free institutions
that provided role models and mentoring female scientists. By drawing on the cases of England and Japan, this paper demonstrates
how the idea of equality can be framed differently, according to wider institutional contexts, and how this idea impacts on
gender policies. |
| |
| Keywords: | |
| 本文献已被 SpringerLink 等数据库收录！ |
|
