The 34th Ueno Seminar of WAN December 21, 2017 Musashino City, Tokyo, Japan

Lecture
Harassment at Workplace and Gender

Moderator: Yuko

Time & Day: 6:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m., Thursday, December 21, 2017

Venue: Meeting Room, 2nd floor, Sky Gate Tower, Musashino Towers 1 Naka-machi, Musashino City, Tokyo, Japan (2 minute walk from North Exit of Mitaka Station, JR Chuo Line)

Social Program: A BYOB or a potluck party is planned to be held from 8:00 p.m.-10:00 p.m. in the Sky Lounge, Sky Cross Tower, Musashino Towers.

Application acceptable from December 1 at the following address: uenoseminar@wan.or.jp

Lecturer
NAKANO Madoka Journalist
NAKANO Madoka was a reporter at a Japanese newspaper company. While on her maternal leave in 2012, she wrote a master's thesis at Chizuko Ueno’s seminar in Ritsumeikan Graduate School in Kyoto. In 2014, her thesis was published as a book titled The Dilemma of the "Maternal Leave Generation" ― Why the Japanese Society Can't Make the Best of Women's Potential?
Nakano left the newspaper in 2015 and started writing on topics such as the ways people work, the diversity at workplace, raising children, women's participation in society. She contributes articles to Yahoo! News Japan and business magazines like Gendai Business, Toyo Keizai Online, and PRESIDENT WOMAN. She has been living in Singapore from 2017.

Abstract of the Lecture (from the lecturer):
In this April, I wrote an article about women victimized by sexual and moral harassment at workplaces in Gendai Business, a Japanese business magazine. The response to the article was so huge that my interviews with the victims were serialized in 8 installments (http://gendai.ismedia.jp/list/series/nakanomadoka Note: Japanese Only). In Japan, mainly young women don't say no to the harassment in the workplace; they tend to act as if they didn't care, or even they made fun of themselves and were amused by the heartless words and teasing by their colleagues and bosses. In the articles, I described how they were hurt inside so deeply. Some of the victims were close to jumping into the railways to commit suicide.
While some men may also face moral harassment, I believe that the interviewees are subjected to harassment especially because they are women. In this lecture, I’d like to examine the difference among the harassment depending on the gender and generation of the victims, and discuss what the fundamental problems are lying in our society and the workplaces. The problems of harassment at workplace are said to have surfaced in 2000s, so I’d like to look at the current social issues behind them too.

Original Article: https://wan.or.jp/article/show/7542
Translated and adapted by N. Tajima