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| 1 |
ID:
171957
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| Summary/Abstract |
The shortage of public childcare in Japan – called the “waitlisted children problem” (taiki jidō mondai) – has assumed increasing visibility and salience over the last several decades. This essay analyzes how this “waitlisted children problem” has been conceived, narrated, and addressed within the specific political, economic, and historical context that is contemporary Japanese society. Going beyond discussions of gender inequality in the workplace and home, the paper interrogates the cultural logics underpinning the recent urgency of debates over public childcare provision in Japan. The key to understanding these developments is recognizing how Japanese women's reproductive desires have become objectified within official and popular discussions as obstructed and requiring emancipation. Correspondingly, promoting gender equality by expanding childcare provision has become a tool of bio-political intervention, a means to remove a statistically calculated inhibition of women's reproductive desire. This links childcare with Japan's national survival, and thus helps to explain how both official and popular debates have converged in seeing the issue as significant and pressing.
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| 2 |
ID:
182892
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| Summary/Abstract |
With a fertility rate twice higher than the OECD average, Israel is a world outlier in terms of fertility. This article puts together a composite portrait of this exceptional reproductive landscape. Within a comparative framework, it offers context-specific illustrations showing that considered vis-à-vis women in the Former Soviet Union (FSU) and Jewish FSU immigrants to the U.S., FSU immigrants to Israel had higher fertility. Inside Israel, all non-Jewish women have decreased their fertility rate in the past two decades, whereas Jewish women of all strata, but ultra orthodox women, have increased their fertility rate. Given the material challenges of child-rearing in Israel, the article concludes with some questions and preliminary answers regarding Israel’s exceptional fertility rates.
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