Worldwide WAN

The Worldwide WAN (W-WAN) introduces activities of Women's Action Network (WAN) and feminist movements, etc. inside and outside of Japan. We translate selected articles in the main WAN website from Japanese into English as well as other international languages including Chinese and Korean. We also publish W-WAN's original articles on this page.

Is the Target of 202030 Achievable? -- Symposium Held in Tokyo to Evaluate Japan's Act Concerning Promotion of Women's Career Activities

2016.11.02 Wed

On October 22, 2016, a symposium was held to examine the effectiveness of the Act Concerning Promotion of Women’s Career Activities (PWCA). Based on the 1999 Basic Act for Gender Equal Society, the PWCA was enacted in August, 2015, with a limited effective period of 10 years to increase opportunities for women in workplaces. Large organizations in both public and private sectors are now obliged to set quantitative targets such as 30% of the leade

Labels: Event Information W-WAN's Original Articles

Chizuko Ueno in Toronto, Canada!

2016.10.05 Wed

Chizuko Ueno in Toronto! WAN's president Chizuko Ueno will be giving lectures at the University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto this October. The following is information on events to be held at the U of T. Event 1 Documentary Film: “What are you afraid of?” Lives of Women who Lived Feminism in Japan (1970’s - present) – The Personal is Political – Monday, October 17, 2016 9:30am – 12 noon At Media Commons Audiovisual

Labels: Event Information

Artist Message-Protect Life - Welcome to Earth

2016.09.29 Thu

The lives of children, women and men are threatened. The forests are screaming. All living things that dwell there have no place to go. Where are we heading? Behind scenes of abundance, nature has been destroyed. There are murders or atrocities somewhere in the world every day. Before fear envelopes the world, I beg you: please embrace life. If each one of us does so, the world will change. This “Protect Life” series debuted at the Sagacho

Labels: Art (A-WAN) Event Information

Protect Life - Welcome to Earth -Recent Oil Paintings and 200 Personal Objects by Sanae Takahata

2016.09.21 Wed

Friday, September 23 - Monday, October 31, 2016 Opening Reception: Friday, September 23rd from 19:00 to 21:00 H.P. FRANCE WINDOW GALLERY Marunouchi Marunouchi Bldg 1F, 2-4-1 Marunouchi , Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-6301 Open : 11:00～21:00 (Weekdays), 11:00～20:00 (Sundays & Holidays) H.P. FRANCE WINDOW GALLERY MARUNOUCHI is pleased to announce “Protect Life -Welcome to Earth” an exhibition of new paintings and new personal objects by Sanae Takahata.

Labels: Event Information

Online Counselling in English: “I am at a loss about how to deal with my mother."

2016.09.19 Mon

MESSAGE FROM READER I am a sophomore student in the music college and my mother separately lives in a local area. MY mother sends me a lots of cellphone emails. When she doesn’t receive my response, she becomes hysteric and calls me so I respond to her unwillingly. Lately I become to feel annoying my mother to send me emails even under a situation of living apart. My parents does not have a good relationship and mother sometimes says tha

Labels: Online Counseling

The 30th Ueno Seminar of WAN

Japanese

2016.08.26 Fri

6:30pm-8:30pm, September 23, 2016 Musashino City, Tokyo, Japan The viewers of Worldwide Wan living in Japan are kindly invited to the following program of Ueno Seminar of WAN. As the first attempt of this kind, the 30th seminar is going to be held in both Japanese and English with some help from bilingual members of W-WAN. If you are interested in the following program, which will include the presentation, question and answer, and discussion, y

Labels: Ueno Seminar

Iceland by Kiyomi Kawano 2

2016.07.26 Tue

(Continued from the previous article) Another issue that I want to report is the “advanced” culture of IS. On the way back from our bus tour to the capital city, our guide told us the arrival to each hotels could be late as there is an LGBT pride parade in the middle of town. I was expecting to encounter it but it was unfortunately over. On the following day I discovered the rainbow road in the busy shopping area. The road is painted with 6 rain

Labels: W-WAN's Original Articles Reading

Please Come to the Event!: “Three, Two, WAN (One) ☆ A Message to Girls” @ Nagoya

2016.07.20 Wed

YY-WAN, a team from Women’s Action Network is holding an event on August 6th (Sat.), 2016, 1.00 - 4.00 pm, @ Nagoya Human Rights Center We’d like to think about and talk about “politics” and its related everyday issues with Prof. Yayo Okano at Doshisha University, who specializes in histories of political thought and feminism theories, as the guest lecturer. Usually we don’t have many opportunities to give our full attention to politics, but, he

Labels: Event Information

Online Counselling in English: “Why do I have to take care of children and parents by myself?”

2016.07.07 Thu

MESSAGE FROM READER I am a mother of two- and three-year olds, and it has been a few months since I came back from a four-year child-rearing leave. My husband’s work requires frequent job transfers and he now works as a single transferee in a distant area. I work in the area where I grew up, and I’ve tried to keep our family in the same house by taking a long child-rearing leave. This means that instead of following my husband, I asked my paren

Labels: Online Counseling

The Words I Care About [No.1] “My kid was rejected by a nursery school. Go to hell, Japan!!!”

2016.06.27 Mon

　　My kid was rejected by a nursery school. Go to hell, Japan!!! 　　What the heck is this, Japan? 　　Isn't this a society where all 100 million people can take active parts, huh? 　　Yesterday I completely failed to get a slot in a nursery school. 　　What the hell am I supposed to do? I can't be active, can I? 　　I bore a baby and I'm saying I'll raise my child and go into society and work and pay taxes. 　　Then what are you so dissatisfied with, Ja

Labels: Essays 連続エッセイやはり気になることば

Iceland by Kiyomi Kawano

2016.06.22 Wed

I was in Iceland (IS) for over three weeks from the end of July, 2015. The reason why I decided to contribute my travelogue to WAN is that IS was more feminism-oriented than I had ever thought of. How feminism-oriented in this country is the focus of this article and I will omit guidebook-like information. The flight bound for Keflavik International Airport took three and a half hours after departing from Helsinki airport. IS is located between

Labels: W-WAN's Original Articles

5th International Conference on Violence in the Health Sector

2016.06.15 Wed

[Event information] The 5th International Conference on Violence in the Health Sector will be held in Dublin, Ireland from October 26-28, 2016. For details, please click the following link: http://www.oudconsultancy.nl/dublin_5_ICWV/index.html Posted by Naoko Hirose

Labels: Event Information

Online Counseling in English: "I have trouble with a dominant boyfriend."

2016.06.04 Sat

QUESTION FROM READER I have trouble with my boyfriend. I feel we are originally different in character but he claims that we are totally matched. I don’t care about trivial matters, thinking “that will be all right,” but he is very nervous about things and is totally different from me. Right now we live together in his condo. He always finds faults in me like the way I speak and so on. When and if I fail to follow his advice, he gets angry at

Labels: Online Counseling

The Past and Future of the Disney Princess; From Snow White to Maleficent

2016.05.31 Tue

Author: Tetsuya Motohashi Publisher: Nakanishiya Publishing (April 30,2016) The Classic animated princess movies such as "Snow White", "Cinderella", and "Sleeping Beauty" that the Disney Productions had produced in the 20th century were imprinted on our DNA as a typical "Happy-ending story" of fairytale princesses. However,those movies are heavily tinged with the reflections of constraints or prejudices in those days. By reviewing those movies

Labels: Reading

Essay by Orie Endo　　The Words That I Care about [No. 3] 　　Whose “Oku-san”?

Japanese

2016.05.14 Sat

I was cooking in the evening with the sound of the TV in the background, when a funny use of words caught my ear. I looked at the screen and saw a nervous-looking sturdy young man in a dark suit standing there. He had said, “I decided to tell the truth after talking to [my] ‘oku-san’ * and parents.” According to the program, he was a professional Yomiuri Giants baseball player, who had been involved with gambling on baseball, although in an inves

Labels: Essays Reading

Lecture on “Simone de Beauvoir and her feminist thought in Mexico”

2016.05.08 Sun

On May 19th, Professor Karine Tinat at the Colegio de Mexico, anthropologist and sociologist, specialist in gender studies, will give a lecture on “Simone de Beauvoir and her feminist thought in Mexico”. Simone de Beauvoir died in Paris on April 14th, 1986, thirty years ago. A long time has passed since then and, however, fresh footprints still appear in certain feminist souls that Beauvoir stamped. This lecture will be divided in two parts. Fi

Labels: Event Information

A Boy Suffocated in a Plastic Case

2016.04.30 Sat

A Boy Suffocated in a Plastic Case In Fukui Prefecture, north-central part of Japan, a father locked his son in a plastic case and left him dead. It’s a tragedy. According to the police, the father said he had had no choice but confine his son “to punish him.” Also, he allegedly told the police that he hadn’t meant to kill him. His remark is a typical excuse for child abuse. The case was about 80 cm i

Labels: 発達障害かも知れない子供と育つということ Essays 連続エッセイ

Strongest Earthquakes since 2011 Trigger Anti-/Pro- Nuclear Power Argument

2016.04.28 Thu

Two of the Japanese traditionally conservative weekly magazines, which were known for their equally hateful headlines against Korea and China in recent years, apparently came out with quite different stances on nuclear issues. This year marks the 5th anniversary of 3/11 Tohoku earthquake and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Not a few TV programs and newspapers reported that many survivors of Fukushima are still forced to live away from their

Labels: W-WAN's Original Articles

My Decent Work Declaration

2016.04.20 Wed

This is one of the articles in a series of “My Decent Work Declaration,” contributed to WAN’s HP as part of a promotion for the upcoming WAN Symposium 2016. As the cherry blossoms came into bloom again this year, my career as a working mother reached as long as eight years. In retrospect, those were the days far from easy, since I have been working fulltime while mothering two children. In a working environment of the present time long and dev

Labels: Event Information

Online counseling in English: "My mother does not accept my relationships."

2016.04.17 Sun

QUESTION FROM READER The problem is about my mother. After having lived by myself for 7 years during college life, from this April I returned to live with my parents again. Four months before this, mother knew that I have a boyfriend who was like just a male friend and a lover. He is a foreign student. Once we happened to fall into a love relationship but tried to keep good friendship as he has a woman whom he wants to marry. I love him and can’

Labels: Online Counseling