Tag Archives: career

Japanese Surname Law Faces Legal Challenge

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photo of japanese surname characters pictures

Five people in Japan are reportedly preparing an unprecedented legal challenge against the Japanese government. Why? They claim that a civil law forcing them to choose a single surname after marriage violates their constitutional rights. If they succeed, married men and women in Japan will for the first time be able to retain their own surnames, removing one of Japan’s few remaining legal obstacles to gender equality.

In the vast majority of cases in Japan, women are required to relinquish their maiden name after marriage, although a small number of men take their wife’s maiden name as their new surname. Critics, however, say the time has come to modernise the law surrounding marital surnames in Japan – the only G8 nation with laws governing such matters.

The five challengers of the law argue that the law’s requirement that a single surname be chosen contradicts articles of Japan’s constitution guaranteeing individual liberty and equal rights to husband and wife. The five are also seeking 1m Japanese Yen each in compensation …

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Super-Barack Notwithstanding, Feminism Needs a Shot in the Arm

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Photo from Ms. Magazine of Barack Obama as "Superman" of Feminism

When Ms magazine placed Barack Obama on the front cover of its latest issue portrayed as the “Superman” of feminism (which isn’t remotely oxymoronic or anything), it got a lot of people talking, among them Daily Mail’s Liz Jones.  So the good news is, feminism is increasingly coming up in conversations.

Obama, for example, has involved himself in some hot-button “feminist” issues, most notably ditching the “global gag rule” that kept pro-choice counseling away from international family planning groups, but there’s still an awfully long way to go … and not just for Obama, who Jones takes to task for the specific type of woman that he’s put into powerful places.

From Jones’ Daily Mail Online piece:

Let’s look at those women hired by Obama. The new homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, is single, and regularly works 20-hour days. Susan Rice, the ambassador to the UN, is fiercely ambitious.

Every one of them, crucially, is past childbearing age. The message is clear: you can have this job, but only if you behave like a man.

And there’s some truth to this, even beyond the Washington.  To be perfectly honest, there are many days when balancing my career and my children, particularly as a single mother, is exhausting—and I am faced with the realization that I might well be a much better mother if I wasn’t a teacher and a far better teacher if I wasn’t a mother …

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The Historical Lessons of Rosie the Riveter

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Photo of Women Working in a Factory During World War II

I started reading when I was a toddler, and it has long been both escapism and passion to me.  However, whereas I used to devour fiction, my love for the written word has expanded in the past year to include historical works of non-fiction.  If you think of the books in the world as existing in a candy store, you could say that I’d been enjoying one floor my entire life, blissfully unaware that thousands of equally delightful options existed.

One of the most important things I’ve learned is how little I really know, and this is as true of some of the historical bases for feminism as it is anything else.

I’d heard of Rosie the Riveter, of course, and had read a fair amount of feminist literature (from Mary Wollstonecraft to Andrea Dworkin) in college, but the “touched upon” nature that one receives in a survey class is completely different than diving …

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Saddest Story of the Week Tells of an Elementary School “Surrounded by Prostitutes”

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I wouldn’t describe myself as pro-prostitution, but I’m definitely not against prostitution, either (especially considering how the industry is treated in our country), just that I acknowledge that it fits into a realm of jobs that can be fulfilling and also be awful (now that I think of it, like most jobs are). I also feel, like many others, that there’s a need to legalize careers in fields relating to sex or drugs that are probably not, considering history, going anywhere. Like any job, prostitution is fraught with risks and rewards, but it’s the sex that makes it more complicated, as we’re all just obsessed with it. Despite all of these feelings about prostitution theoretically, I could not get past the deep sadness depicted in this article about an elementary school that is “surrounded by prostitutes.”

At West Farms elementary school in the Bronx in New York City:

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