SNA (Tokyo) — Women march in Tokyo for gender equality.

Transcript

Protester: I talk a lot about gender and that kind of stuff with my friends, and I just read a lot of information in SNS and like, you know, news articles, but I didn’t really have courage to step on and like, you know, take action by myself, so, yeah, I thought this is a great opportunity to do that.

We don’t have like enough policy systems that support women and men with children, or like they have to take care of their elderly family or something. Society’s problem comes to the workplace and that discourages women to want to keep working, and that goes to our economic disadvantage.

Women have to be feminine and men have to be masculine, that is the core problem that we have. And that links to all the violence, for example, against women. People can’t live being who they are. They just get labelled as a woman or a man, and they have to act in a certain way. And I think in Japan there are a lot of expectations as a man and as a woman, you have to act in a certain way. And also, men have to feed the family, women have to take care of the children and housework and stuff.

I hear a lot of stories where it’s kind of okay for men to harass women. It happens all the time and it actually happens a lot to those women who work in a contract base, not like full time, like secretaries, like those people who have seemingly less power. People use that to harass them, and that is so unfair and that discourages women to work, and that actually encourages women to stick to the gender stereotype, and that actually reconfirms our gender stereotype: Like women, they don’t want to work, they just want to get married and get children, and in everyday working place wise, we have huge problem.

I think that the big problem in Japan is that people don’t speak up. There’s a stagnation. It’s just culture that people aren’t really encouraged to speak up. This is a grassroots movement, and I think that’s a great step for Japan, like for people to stand up. As soon as people start speaking out, standing up, the situation will change in society, in households, and in families too.

Get the feeling that your news services aren’t telling you the whole truth? That’s what happens when they get their operating money from governments and business corporations. SNA relies exclusively upon its subscribers in order to remain fully independent. Please support fearless and progressive media in Japan through Patreon.

For breaking news, follow on Twitter @ShingetsuNews