午夜剧场

The scarcity of women in politics has become common knowledge. It may come as a surprise, but it has only been in the last three to four years that the low number of female legislators has become a major topic of discussion. Since then, in many interviews, I have been repeatedly asked questions such as "Why are there so few female politicians?", "What is the problem with having so few?", "What are the benefits of increasing the number of female legislators?", and "How can we increase them?" I wrote this book because I wanted to answer these questions collectively and share data and insights that many people can utilize.

The word "women" does not appear in the title of this book, which elucidates the structural background and problems behind the scarcity of female legislators. The reason I chose "Male-Dominated Politics" for the title is that the lack of women is often trivialized as a problem only for women, or the argument is shifted to suggest it is a problem on the women's side. The essence of the problem is that men monopolize power; unless this is broken, the number of women will not increase, and even if it does, it will not lead to meaningful transformation. I chose this title to shift the focus from a women's issue to the problem of male-dominated politics.

There are also men who object to the fact that only men monopolize politics. Therefore, the project to transform male-dominated politics is by no means for women alone. Even among women, there are many who are integrated into male-dominated politics and wish to maintain it. It is not a composition of men vs. women.

What I emphasized in this book is that increasing the number of female legislators is merely a "passing point." If we mistake increasing women as the ultimate goal, we may end up only increasing the number of female legislators who serve to reproduce male-dominated politics.

I want people to first perceive the distortion of politics monopolized by men as a defect of democracy. This distortion also manifests in policy. It is hard to imagine that an economy can develop when women are deprived of opportunities to demonstrate their abilities and are regarded only as cheap labor. The legal foundation for gender equality is weak in Japan. Other negative legacies of male-dominated politics can be seen throughout Japanese society. I hope you will read this book for details. And I want you to feel that change is possible.

Mari Miura

Iwanami Shinsho

304 pages, 1,078 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.