Gender-related ‘unconscious bias’ fueled in Japan schools, affects children’s worldview

TOKYO — A study group headed by Mari Miura, a professor at Sophia University’s Faculty of Law in Tokyo, aiming to achieve gender equality in Japan from the local level up, has compiled a Japanese gender gap index by prefecture. Using the same method as the global gender gap index, the group collects data on women’s participation in local politics, economy, education and administration. Based on the latest data for the year 2023, the Mainichi Shimbun looked into factors contributing to gender inequality across Japan and efforts to tackle the issue.

Fukushima Prefectural Asaka Reimei High School in the prefectural city of Koriyama has female leaders: Principal Yoshiko Kurokawa and Vice Principal Miyuki Kushida. In 2021, Kushida applied for the vice principal position when she was working at the prefectural gender equality center, hoping to “change the scenery where only men assume the principal and vice principal roles.”

Kushida leaves the house at 6:30 a.m. and doesn’t come home until 7:30 p.m. She takes on heavy responsibilities, from running the school, consulting with teachers to responding to guardians. There’s little incentive in working as vice principal as far as the pay. Many female teachers don’t personally know women in managerial positions and such role models. If they also take care of the housework and raise children, “Even the thought of assuming a senior position would break them,” Kushida says.

Teachers have plenty of opportunities to join workshops and training programs related to teaching, but not so much when it comes to organizational management. Kurokawa points out that regardless of the gender, teachers shy away from managerial jobs.

“It’s a fulfilling job, but without reducing the excessive burden (that comes with it) the number of female vice principals will not increase,” Kushida said. She added. “I might not have volunteered if I had a child.”

According to the domestic gender gap index, Fukushima Prefecture in northeast Japan ranked 46th among the country’s 47 prefectures in women’s participation in education. From public primary to secondary education in the prefecture, or from elementary to high school, women made up 8.4% of principals and 11.9% of vice principals or second headmasters in the 2022 school year.

The prefectural education board has set a goal of bringing those figures to 13% for principal and 15% for vice principal by the 2025 academic year. The education board’s personnel division manager Toshiyuki Takahashi says the reasons why the prefecture doesn’t see many female teachers in the senior managerial positions is, “Since Fukushima is a large prefecture, teachers don’t want to transfer (to schools far from home). They also don’t have many role models.”

Starting in 2013, transfers of female managerial staff in elementary and junior high schools have been limited to in principle areas they can commute from their home, and a new rule was also introduced in 2023 for high school managerial staff that consideration should be given to the work location to the extent possible in cases with special circumstances. The education board has also been taking measures, including publishing female teacher promotional newsletters four times a year to introduce role models.

In the Japanese government’s Third Basic Plan for Gender Equality approved by the Cabinet in 2010, the target rate of women in the vice principal or higher positions in primary and secondary education was set at “30% by 2020.” That goal has since been revised multiple times, and in the fifth basic plan released in 2020, it was set at “25% for vice principal and second headmaster, and 20% for principal by 2025.”

In the 2022 academic year, Japan saw women making up 24% of vice principal/second head master positions and 18.8% of principals, but the gap between prefectures remains large. In addition, according to sociology of education professor Ginko Kawano at Kyushu University, the rate of women in senior managerial positions — vice principal and above — was 22.3% nationwide — quite short of the initial 30% target.

How does the gender gap in school management impact society? Kawano points out, “Children accepts a world they see as natural. When the number of female managers is small, children will think ‘Leadership is supposed to be assumed by men,'” leading to “unconscious bias.”

According to Kawano, the country-wide trend shows that the higher the grade and the higher the position, the lower the percentage of women. She says, “Women make up over 60% of teachers in elementary school, but this falls in junior high and falls even further in high school.” She then warned, “This will lead to the bias, like ‘Men are not good at care work’ and ‘Women are not good at complicated studies.'”

Unconscious bias affects the academic careers of girls in rural areas.

Hyogo Prefecture native Rion Kawasaki, 22, and 23-year-old Momoka Emori from Shizuoka Prefecture, both fourth-year students at the University of Tokyo, grew up watching other girls in their home towns reluctant to try out entrance exams for hard-to-get-in universities.

Wondering why girls in the countryside don’t aim for the University of Tokyo, the pair established the student group #YourChoiceProject. They carried out a survey in 2023 targeting college-preparatory highs schools across Japan and looked into responses given by 3,716 second-year students.

Asked whether they felt going to competitive universities would benefit them in the future, the number of girls in rural areas who answered “Yes” was significantly smaller than that of boys, while no difference between the genders were seen among the respondents in the greater Tokyo region.

Furthermore, while there were only small differences between girls and boys in the greater Tokyo region over their parents’ expectations for going to competitive universities and the students’ tolerance levels for trying the entrance exams again the next year in the event they don’t get accepted, the parents’ expectations and the students’ tolerance levels were both lower among girls from rural regions than their male counterparts.

Kawasaki and other members of the group estimate that there is the unconscious bias, like “Girls can stay in their hometowns (after high school)” and “They shouldn’t try again the next year (if they don’t get in),” among girls in rural Japan and also their parents. Since many of the socially influential people such as politicians and company executives are often from prestigious universities, the group warned that without changing the situation where only few women from rural areas are enrolled in competitive universities, Japan won’t see gender or regional gap improvements in the near future.

(Japanese original by Tohru Shirakawa, Tokyo Regional News Department)

The 2023 gender gap index for Japan’s 47 prefectures on women’s participation in education according to the gender equality study group. The higher the ranking the smaller the gender gap in the prefecture:

1. Kochi

2. Tokyo, Kanagawa

4. Tokushima

5. Tottori

6. Ishikawa

7. Hiroshima

8. Okayama

9. Okinawa

10. Kyoto

11. Ibaraki

12. Hyogo, Fukuoka

14. Wakayama

15. Mie

16. Gifu

17. Toyama

18. Kumamoto

19. Miyagi, Aichi

21. Yamagata

22. Aomori

23. Nara

24. Tochigi

25. Ehime

26. Kagawa

27. Nagasaki

28. Osaka

29. Iwate

30. Shiga

31. Nagano

32. Fukui

33. Gunma, Saga

35. Akita

36. Shizuoka

37. Miyazaki

38. Shimane

39. Yamaguchi

40. Chiba

41. Oita

42. Niigata

43. Yamanashi

44. Kagoshima

45. Saitama

46. Fukushima

47. Hokkaido