Gender and Human Rights Politics in Japan: Global Norms and Domestic Networks Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Gender and Human Rights Politics in Japan: Global Norms and Domestic Networks? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Gender and Human Rights Politics in Japan: Global Norms and Domestic Networks. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Gender and Human Rights Politics in Japan: Global Norms and Domestic Networks ReviewGender and Human Rights Politics in Japan. By Jenniffer Chan-Tiberghien. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2004. x, 220 pp. $(hardcover)
The economic recession, the political corruption and the loss of Liberal Democratic Party in the Diet often suggest problems with the Japanese state which is marked by the dominance of the iron triangle-the bureaucracy, the political parties, and the interest groups. But Jenniffer Chan Tiberghien argues in her book Gender and Human Rights Politics in Japan: Global Norms and Domestic Networks that the 1990s was "the most significant decade for the advancement of human rights of women and children in Japan"(2) The book studies the mobilization of global norms by NGO in Japan and its impact on Japanese state, and convincingly argues that the global human rights norms are central to the extensive legal and political changes women's and children's human rights in the 1990s. Exploring the intersections between gender, race, and other social relations in women's human rights movement, she questions the myth of a homogenous women's movement in Japan in the 1990s.
Eclectically drawing on personal interviews, reports by the Japanese government, and the observation of participants at world conferences, the book examines how discourses produced by global women's movements "arise as norms and how they are reproduced locally by epistemic networks."(137) Tiberghien offers insights into how six world conferences-Vienna (1993), Cairo (1994), Beijing (1995), Stockholm (1996), New York (2000), and Durban (2001)- reframed five issues of sexuality in Japan: the pill, sexual harassment, military sexual slavery, domestic violence, and child prostitution. She argues that the mobilization of the global norms concerning women's and children's rights attributed to changes in Japanese government policy, the extending of government functions at both central and local levels, and legal reforms in women and children's human rights from 1995 to 1999.
Tiberghien emphasizes that Japanese women's grassroots movements mobilized by nongovernmental networks have successfully brought those five issues of sexuality to public concern before the government took action in the late 1990s. She provides details of how numerous nongovernmental organizations brought changes to five issues of sexuality from 1994-1999, by revealing the tension and cooperation between NGO and government institutions, the networks among various NGOs, and the alliance among women, men, and other professional and social groups. Japan's Network for Women and Health protested against and petitioned to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, and got the pill approved. The Japanese Women's Studies Association, the group of No! Sexual Harassment, and the Campus Sexual Harassment Network pushed the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Labor to conduct survey and set up guidelines on sexual harassment. The comfort women movement by the Asian Women's Fund "not only ended the silence on sexual abuse committed by the Japanese military" but also "opened up opportunities" for research and lawsuits on "war responsibility issues" (61). Lawyer's associations, female members of Social Democratic Party, and the National Women Counselors Network provided domestic violence counseling centers for women. The End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism (ECPAT) protested against child pornograghy and child sexual abuse, and pushed for relevant legislative changes.
A major contribution of Tiberghien's book is that she studies how global norms concerning women's and children's human rights have translated into changes in education in Japan. She argues that in the 1990s the global "human rights standard has replaced traditional approaches to address the issues of women, children and others minority groups-the elderly, the disabled, Buraku, Ainu, foreigners, HIV patients, and former prisoners. She notices that human rights education in Japan has "expanded to include topics that were taboo as late as the 1980s," and new subjects have been "defined according to global standards" (77). Such education is "not just an incorporation of global human rights norms in policy pares and laws, but training and outreaching activities by diverse state and substate actors throughout Japan" (94).
Tiberghien maintains that the presence of NGO and their abilities to win support from political parties are crucial for the redefinitions and changes in the five issues of sexuality. She contrasts the extensive changes concerning women's and children's human rights to the limited development in minority rights in Japan. The transnational advocacy networks on caste, indigenous people's rights, colonization, and migrant's rights at the World Conference Against Racism in Durban in 2001 have redefined racism as an issue in Japan, and lead to new considerations of the human rights of Burakumin, Ainu, Okinawans, Koreans, and migrant workers. She finds that "the lack of institutionalized global human rights frames before the Durban conference" and "the failure to garner key political support by Japanese nongovernmental networks accounts for the limited development of minority rights in Japan" (119). She argues that issue reframing at world conferences, advocacy of human rights education, and leverage politics through alliances with key political parties explains the changes in women's and children's human rights.
From gender perspectives, the book situates Japan within global human rights standards and sheds lights on the importance of transnational feminist networks to the rise of global civil society in the 1990s. The use of statistics, charts, and illustrations increases the clarity and efficiency of the argument. The book is a major breakthrough in its research methodology and the analytical framework i scholarship on the impact of NGO in East Asia.

(Yuxin Ma, History Department, Armstrong Atlantic State University)
Gender and Human Rights Politics in Japan: Global Norms and Domestic Networks Overview

Want to learn more information about Gender and Human Rights Politics in Japan: Global Norms and Domestic Networks?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now