Women and family issues in Turkey and Japan

Journalists and Writers Foundation (JWF) Women’s Platform organized a workshop entitled “Family and Women Issues in Turkey and Japan” with a group of academics from Japan on February 29, at its Kuzguncuk Office.

JWF Vice President, Cemal Uşak was the moderator of the program in which Prof. Keiko Hirao from Sophia University, Prof. Yuko Ogasawar from Nihon University and author Maha Harada presented their articles on family issues in Japan.

The workshop consisted two sessions; in the first session sociologist Prof. Hirao delivered her presentation on changing structure of the society and hierarchy of values in the last 60 years in Japan. Prof. Hirao argued that after WWII devastating changes were experienced on family structure, and population of singles increased rapidly due to the war. Prof. Hirao continued that the equality of access on education was realized among the genders since 1950’s. Besides the technological developing and modernization, the role shares in family remained same and women started to both work inside and outside the house.

Second speech of the first session came from Prof. Yuko Ogasawar. In her speech she argued that after WWII in Japanese society the age of average marriage age got older and the number of people postponing marriage increases every year. Prof. Ogasawar claimed that in 1980, 80 percent of the population was married, whereas by 2010 this number decreased to 40 percent. Prof Ogasawar talked about the foundation of “Marriage Agencies”, different institutions like employment agency, out of necessity for arranged marriages with respect to the changes in family and marriage structure.

Japanese academicians at JWF

On the other hand, author Maha Harada talked about changing consuming habits of the Japanese society in recent times and the women’s pioneering participation in the market after WWII. Harada argued that in politics and economy masculine trends continues and business was lead also by predominantly man. Harada also talked about her profession as a writer and she explained her reason for writing saying, “I am a writer because I want to transfer the experiences of my time to the future for the younger generations”.

On the second session, presentations of Dr. Sema Ramazanoglu, and Asli Sancar attracted the attention of the guests. Asli Sancar made her presentation on Ottoman Family and talked about governments’ search for a model for family structure and she added that remembering past experiences could help in this matter. Sancar argued that Islamic values were overwhelmingly predominating in Ottoman family structure, and Qur’anic principles encouraging strong family relations established the ground for family structure in Ottoman society. Sancar stated added that religion and culture defined the meaning of family. In this sense Sancar continued “Polygamy was not illegal however in practice it was seen on 1 percent of the society”.

After the Q-A session, workshop ended with the closing speech of Mr. Cemal Uşak.

Published on Women's Platform of Journalists and Writers Foundation, 29 March 2012, Thursday

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