Comparative Perspectives on Gender Equality in Japan and Norway: Same but Different?

This book compares perspectives on gender equality in Norway and Japan, focusing on family, education, media, and sexuality and reproduction as seen through a gendered lens. What can we learn from a comparison between two countries that stand in significant contrast to each other with respect to gender equality? Norway and Japan differ in terms of historical, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. Most importantly, Japan lags far behind Norway when it comes to the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Report. Rather than taking a narrow approach that takes as its starting point the assumption that Norway has so much ‘more’ to offer in terms of gender equality, the authors attempt to show that a comparative perspective of two countries in the West and East can be mutually beneficial to both contexts in the advancement of gender equality. The interdisciplinary team of researchers contributing to this book cover a range of contemporary topics in gender equality, including fatherhood and masculinity, teaching and learning in gender studies education, cultural depictions of gender, trans experiences and feminism. This unique collection is suitable for researchers and students of gender studies, sociology, anthropology, Japan studies and European studies.

Masako Ishii-Kuntz is Trustee/Vice President and Professor Emeritus of Ochanomizu University. Her specialties include family sociology and gender studies, and her research focuses on men’s childcare and housework and women’s labour force participation. She was the President of the Japan Society of Family Sociology (2016–2019) and a board member of the Japan Sociological Society. She was a member in the United Nations Expert Group meeting and in the Gender Equality Bureau Cabinet Office’s committee. In recognition of her contribution to the international research and teaching of family sociology, she received the 2012 Jan Trost Award of the National Council on Family Relations in the US. Her publications include, among others, Sociology of Childcaring Men (2013) and Family Violence in Japan (2016).

Guro Korsnes Kristensen is Professor in Gender, Equality and Diversity Studies in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). She holds an MA in Social Anthropology and a PhD in Gender Studies, and her research areas are reproduction, gender equality, immigration and integration. Kristensen is the project manager of the research project ‘Norway–Japan: Bridging Research and Education in Gender Equality and Diversity’ (2019–2022) funded by the Norwegian Research Council.

Priscilla Ringrose is Professor of Gender Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She has led two Norwegian Research Council-funded projects on Paid Domestic Labour and on Integration of Adolescent Migrants. She has co-edited three anthologies: Paid Migrant Domestic Labour in a Changing Europe (2016), Fundamentalism, Globalism and the Public Sphere (2011) and Fundamentalism and Communication: Culture, Media and the Public Sphere (2011). She has published widely on topics including migration and gender, migration and education, domestic labour, new media and Middle East war, Islamic fundamentalisms, intercultural cinema and 20th-century francophone literature.