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Women and Housing Assets in the Context of Japan's Home-owning Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2008

YOSUKE HIRAYAMA  and
MISA IZUHARA
YOSUKE HIRAYAMA
Affiliation:
Professor of Housing and Urban Studies, Kobe University, Japan
MISA IZUHARA
Affiliation:
School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol email M.Izuhara@bristol.ac.uk
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Abstract

Despite the fact that women's rights have been increasingly defined as equal to men's in law and policy, in post-Second World War Japan women continue to be at a disadvantage in many aspects of social and economic life. Drawing from a survey of 2,205 Japanese women, this article focuses in particular on women's home ownership as a new catalyst behind increasing social stratification in Japan. The women's experiences are closely linked to Japan's institutional ‘familism’: the development of social policy that has been explicitly connected to the male-breadwinner model. We argue that a wide range of institutional and policy practices – mortgage provision, property ownership, social security and taxation and labour market mechanisms – has combined to define the housing asset status of women. We discuss the women's current housing asset portfolio, and also recent socio-economic changes that have begun to redefine their position in a home-owning society. The case of Japan – a patriarchal but shifting home-owning democracy – contributes to our understanding of the contemporary dynamics of women's interaction between family, work and housing in the institutional context.

Type
Article
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , October 2008 , pp. 641 - 660
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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