Empowering Women by ICT towards Gender Equality: A Case of Japan

This paper reviews the framework for gender equality formulated by the government and provides an overview of the current status Of women in Japan with statistical materials made available by various government agencies and international organizations, and academic literature. One of the serious issues facing Japanese society is the declining birth rate closely interwoven with gender inequality. The overview reveals discriminations placed against women in society and industries that cause difficulties for them to participate in the labor market. The efforts made by the government seem to be having,in effect on correcting the disparity between men and women to a certain degree. In reality, however, Japan lags way behind her counterparts in the advanced part of the world in terms of the proportion of women taking part in decision making processes and their active involvement in the labor market is still considerably low. Japan has yet to improve the Situation that could be referred to as satisfactory. It points Out a dilemma in achieving the goals of both increasing birth rate and promoting women's labor participation in that when One goes Lip the other goes down under the present circumstances. The paper introduces case studies focusing on well-educated married women challenging to cope with this dilemma by balancing work-life with "Tele-working," and lastly discusses a conceptual framework which may be of use in facilitating the argument of gender related-issues and advancing the status of women by the use of diverse technologies on networks if utilized appropriately without a single culture or political entity dominating.