Dulu saya sering mempertanyakan pada champion gender ala Jepang, Pak Abdul Latif, Jehan dll...kenapa sih pertumbuhan penduduk Jepang nyaris minus? Apa perempuannya pada ngambeg? Penulis di bawah ini rupanya setuju.
Lesson learned? "Kalau nggak kepingin populasi penduduk naik turun seperti yoyo, beri perhatian pada status perempuan di dalam dan di luar rumah" Salam Mia http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaileditorial.asp? fileid=20050901.F04&irec=3 The worrisome decline of the Japanese population Gwynne Dyer, London The Japanese have known it was coming for years, but it still arrived sooner than anyone expected. The Japanese population has gone into absolute decline, and there will be at least 60,000 fewer Japanese at the end of this year than there were last January. In coming years, the decline will only accelerate. It's the same elsewhere in East Asia. Last week, the National Statistical Office in Seoul announced that South Korea's total fertility rate (the number of babies the average woman has in a lifetime) has now plummeted to 1.16, even lower than Japan's. China's looks better at 1.7, but that is deceptive because there is a 15 percent surplus of boys over girls in the youngest population groups. All these countries' populations are going to start falling steeply over the next generation. The obvious explanation is that the East Asian countries, as they educate their people and turn into fully developed societies, are simply following the well-beaten path first traveled by the European countries. Italy, after all, has a total fertility rate of only 1.4, and Russia's is down to 1.3: If these trends persist, there will 15 million fewer Italians by mid-century, and 40 million fewer Russians. But the obvious explanation is probably wrong, because not all developed countries have collapsing birth-rates. In countries that have attract large numbers of immigrants, like the United States, Canada and Australia, the population will continue to grow or at least remain stable, but they are not relevant to the East Asian case. China, Japan or Korea could easily attract immigrants in large numbers, but they could not integrate them: Their citizens simply cannot believe that a new arrival from the Philippines, Iran or Ethiopia could ever become a full member of the host society. However, some European countries are holding their populations without mass immigration. The average fertility rate in France, to pick the most striking example, is 1.9. That is not quite enough in itself to keep the population stable over the long term, as the "replacement" rate is 2.2, but it is close enough to the replacement level that a relatively small flow of immigrants guarantees continued growth in the population. The French population, now close to 60 million, is forecast by the United Nations to be 63.5 million in 2025. So what are the French doing right? France and Japan are both fully industrialized, highly urbanized, very well-educated countries with generous social services. They are both places where it is very expensive to have children. And both countries have experienced extreme fluctuations in their birth-rates in response to changing conditions. Japan's population almost doubled in the half-century after 1945, from 70 to 125 million. If current trends persist, it will be back down to 70 million before the end of this century. France's population, by contrast, was already 40 million in 1840, but it then stopped growing for a hundred years, mainly because it remained a largely rural country and generations of farmers limited their children in order to keep the land together. Then the rapid post-war urbanization of France ended the obsession with land, and in the past half-century the population has grown from 40 to 60 million. It is still growing, albeit slowly. Why? The biggest difference between France and Japan is the status of women. Japanese women have a low status in the family, and despite the occasional female high-flyer they have an even lower status in the workforce (which they are generally expected to leave after they marry). As a result, they have effectively gone on strike: The average age of Japanese women at marriage is going up by several months each year, and the birth-rate has collapsed. In France, by contrast, the traditional male-dominated family is all but dead -- almost half of all French children are born "out of wedlock" -- but informal new styles of family living give women more control over their lives while still providing secure environments for most children. And the main thing women do with their freedom is to stay in the workforce: 80 percent of French women between 24 and 49 work, the highest rate in the EU. It's not just about money; it's about independence and satisfaction with one's life. The French government helps its female citizens with free child-care (even for the very young), with subsidized vacation camps during the school holidays, and with tax breaks and family allowances for bigger families, but other countries do the same with much less impact on the birth-rate. The three-child family is still a normal phenomenon among the French middle class because French women do not feel they must choose between motherhood and a real life outside the house. There are no immediately useful lessons in this for East Asian societies, since changing popular attitudes on gender roles take decades or generations. For the many countries that are still in the "demographic transition" and working to get their birth-rates down to 3.0 or even 4.0, it is bound to seem a distant, hypothetical problem. But there is a lesson for everybody here. The lesson is this: If you don't want your country's population to fluctuate like a yo-yo on a fifty-year string, pay attention to women's status inside and outside the family. ===http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32359 JAPAN: Wives Stash Cash to Freedom Suvendrini Kakuchi TOKYO , Mar 3 (IPS) - Masami, 57, is waiting for the day when she can divorce her husband, a respected professor of medicine she married 32 years ago. ''I plan to divorce my husband when he retires so I can receive a part of his retirement package. The prospect of waiting a few more unhappy years to be free is no big deal because it would be stupid to leave without a stable financial backing for my old age,'' says the smartly dressed woman. Masami, who prefers that her last name not be used, recently sent off her daughter, the youngest of her three children, to pursue graduate studies in the Netherlands. Masami's story, according to gender experts, is not new in Japan and reflects age old patterns where women, traditionally forced into the role of homemakers, have over the years developed ingenious ways to stay financially independent. The practice is so common that there is even a Japanese word for it, 'hesokuri' (close to the navel) which is symbolic of how vital it was for homemakers to stash away some cash for themselves. ''Japanese wives, especially the older generation that stayed home, have always saved for a rainy day. They put away a small amount of cash for themselves each month from the household income, mainly from the husband's salary, to be able to buy expensive items for their personal use or for a more drastic step as a divorce,'' says Sumiko Shimizu, who runs I-Josei, a grass roots lobby for gender equality. A recent survey covering 500 homemakers by Sompo Japan DIY Life Insurance discovered that their hidden savings, accumulated over time, averaged Yen 4 million (34,000 US dollars)for homemakers in their 50s, nearly three times as much as the Yen 1.46 million (12,000 US dollars) for those in their 20s. Stories told by the savers show that money was secreted into the lining of kimonos or buried under the floor in the kitchen -- an area where husbands rarely entered. And, as Masami's plans illustrate, modern-day homemakers are also entitled to receive a portion of their husband's retirement allowance, a major factor for security in old age when family responsibilities cease. ''Frankly, walking away with a part of my husband's retirement does not demand much soul searching for me,'' says Masami, explaining that she has spent the best years of her life cleaning, cooking and managing the household while her husband was free to pursue his career and gain personal satisfaction by climbing to the top. ''Naturally, I expect to share my husband's retirement to compensate for the work I have done up to how. Now that my youngest child has left for Europe, I am free to do what I want at last,'' she says. Indeed, while divorce rates are miniscule in Japan -- close to 270,000 cases in 2004 -- there has been a rising trend among middle-aged couples or those married over 20 years. Takayo Yamamoto, an expert on the rising economic power of women in Japan, explains that in this affluent society, more women are searching for personal fulfillment in the form of both material and personal self-expression. ''Gone are the days when Japanese women thought modesty and docility were important virtues. Today, the trend is living well and that means spending on products that make them look beautiful and leading lives without the pressure of traditional social constraints,'' she explains. The pattern is here to stay. Yamamoto's research has shown that Japan's baby boomers, women in their forties, are now among the nation's leading spenders and play an important role in the national economy. The rise of working women is another factor that contributes to economic power that is linked to more divorces as well as late marriages and poor birth rates -- now down to 1.3 per woman in Japan. The ministry of health and welfare reported that women comprise 30 percent of the workforce in large companies and the new trend is to allow this category, previously restricted to office helpers, slowly into the male-dominated management track. Sumiko contends that as Japan's seniority job system changes and men cannot rely on regular salaries, the old ''hesokuri'' system will also change in that women will no longer be hiding their savings from their husbands and waiting for the day when they can leave with a major portion of his retirement allowance in their pockets. ''Women are doing the same thing (thinking about themselves), but this time openly and with a self-confidence they did not have in the old days,'' Sumiko said. (END/2006)===Commentary: Gender bias is holding back Japan's economy New Feature By William Pesek Jr. Bloomberg News Tuesday, March 8, 2005 TOKYO That faint cracking noise heard around Japan this week is the sound of its glass ceiling being breached. At least one hopes so, as this male-dominated society waits to see if a woman will run a major Japanese company for the first time. The BMW Tokyo president, Fumiko Hayashi, 58, has been proposed for the presidency of the retailer Daiei. . While the job is among the most thankless in Japan - Daiei is perhaps the nation's most notorious zombie company - the appointment of Hayashi would be an important step forward. Japan has done little to empower women and many companies are reluctant to increase their role in making decisions. . Stories like Hayashi's are all too rare in Japan. The underutilization of the female work force is an economic problem that indirectly adds to the country's huge public debt. . Women here have made some advances. Discrimination has been formally banned, and more and more women are trading in the office-lady uniforms that make them look like 1970s air hostesses and forging their own future. Yet women still have few chances to enter the executive suite, unless they're playing a supporting role. . Corporate Women Directors International, a U.S. nonprofit organization, last year noted that only two women sit on the boards of 27 Japanese companies listed on Fortune's Global 200 list. All 78 U.S. companies on the list had at least one female board member. . Japan has no monopoly on discrimination, yet how often does the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development urge a developed nation to provide women with more job opportunities? . It's doing just that in Japan, where even the minister in charge of gender issues is a man. . Tapping only half of the labor pool holds back growth. Companies that ignore their female workers may end up with a distinguished, white-haired man in charge, but that doesn't mean the best person is getting the job. . Exclusion of women also exacerbates Japan's biggest long-term challenge: demographics. The nation's birth rate, or number of children per woman, fell to a record low of 1.29 in 2003 versus about two in the early 1970s. Preliminary government statistics suggest that the rate fell further in 2004. . Unless that trend is reversed, deaths in the rapidly aging nation could overtake the number of births by 2006, a government study said last year. That would be a crisis for a highly indebted nation of 127 million people that has yet to figure out how to fund the national pension system down the road. . Sexism deserves much of the blame. For many women, the decision to delay childbirth is a form of rebellion against societal expectations to have children and become housewives. Until having children is not a career-ending decision for millions of bright, ambitious and well-educated Japanese, the birthrate will drop and economic growth will lag. . All this has more to do with Japan's massive national debt than politicians realize. Instead of trying a solution that many international economists say might do far more to bolster growth - empowering women - Japan has built roads, bridges, dams and just about anything else to create jobs. . The government has bailed out Daiei and myriad other deadbeat companies and pumped countless yen into banks that support profitless ventures, much of this financed with public debt. Instead of vibrant growth, rising stock valuations and strong productivity, Japan has a debt load approaching 150 percent of gross domestic product. . . Fortunately, leaders are beginning to grapple for solutions. "The government," Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said late last year, "will provide assistance so that women can exert their talents and take on challenges in various areas, including business." . Nevertheless, many Japanese politicians, including former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, continue to deride women as selfish for not having children sooner. . Japan should use tax initiatives and investments to reduce the cost of daycare and child rearing. Until Japan has an extensive infrastructure allowing mothers to return to work, many women will have fewer babies, if any at all. The government also should encourage companies to seek more diversity in their executive suites. . The corporate sector has a big role to play here. "Companies have to make it easier for working women to have children," says Hiroshi Okuda, head of the Japan Business Federation. "To do that, they will have to take on a bigger share of the costs." . The traditionally minded men who run Japan seem to be realizing that their economic problems arise in part from gender inequality. If they do not do more to tap their female work force, economic growth may continue to underperform and national debt may continue to rise apace. It comes down to a simple choice: more babies or more bonds.=== [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
