Sexual Harassment Comes of Age? Studies on Working Women and College Students in Japan

Event details
Speaker : Dr Chika Shinohara
               Post-doctoral Fellow, Dept of Japanese Studies and Dept of Sociology, NUS
Date      : Friday, 31 October 2008
Time      : 3:00pm - 4:00pm
Venue    : AS4/03-28 (JS Meeting Room)

Abstract

Public consciousness of sexual harassment, or sekuhara , emerged in Japan during the late 1980s. This presentation introduces how consciousness of a new legal category diffuses into Japanese society and begins to take root in younger cohorts. Analyses of working women in Japan show how age cohorts entering the labor force following major equal opportunity legislation report more sexual harassment than do older cohorts. After introducing my US-Japan comparative project with Chris Uggen, I will provide some of my preliminary analyses with college student data. The effects of age, income, and job satisfaction on sexual harassment consciousness all differ significantly between the United States and Japan. Family and life course factors are also important predictors, particularly in Japan.

About the speaker

Chika Shinohara is a Japanese Studies & Sociology joint postdoctoral fellow at the National University of Singapore. She studies law and social change in globalization focusing on work-family-gender issues. She is especially interested in how international norms diffuse to local societies and the role of a constructed vision or “social expectation” in such a social change. Her writing appears in The Sociological Quarterly, Journal of Civil Society, and Japan Focus. Her research, teaching, and advising interests include the developments of equal employment opportunity law, sexual harassment, volunteerism, and non-profit organizations in civil society.