Joyce Gelb

Women of Japan and Korea: continuity and change

1. Introduction --Joyce Gelb and Marian Lief Palley Part I: Japanese Women 2. Women and the Family in Transition in Postindustrial Japan --Chizuko Ueno 3. Womens Education and Gender Roles in Japan --Kumiko Fujimura-Fanselow and Atsuko Kameda 4. Abortion and Womens Reproductive Rights: The State of Japanese Women, 1947-1991 --Miho Ogino 5. Women Workers in Japan: Past, Present, Future --Eiko Shinotsuka 6. Obstacles and Opportunities: Women and Political Participation in Japan --Kimiko Kubo and Joyce Gelb 7. A Short History of the Feminist Movement in Japan --Sandra Buckley Part II: Korean Women 8. Six Barriers to Equality for Women in Korea --Elizabeth Choi 9. Overcoming Confucian Barriers: Changing Educational Opportunities for Women in Korea --Ho Kyung Won 10. Korean Womens Groups, Social Movements, and Health --Lisa Kim Davis 11. Women Workers in a Changing Korean Society --Roh Mihye 12. Agenda for Social Reform: Womens Political Participation in Sough Korea --Sohn Bong Scuk 13. Feminism in a Confucian Society: The Womens Movement in Korea --Marian Lief Palley About the Contributors Index

The Equal Employment Opportunity Law: A Decade of Change for Japanese Women?

This article analyzes the impact of the Equal Employment Opportunity Law in Japan, passed in 1986 and now over a decade old. The article views the law as weak and examines its role in relation to the three groups most affected by the legislation: women, bureaucrats, and employers. The article argues that, although the law has produced few gains in employment opportunities for women, it has led to renewed efforts at litigation, increased consciousness and activism among women, and amendments to the law, passed in 1997.

Women and Interest Group Politics: A Comparative Analysis of Federal Decision-Making

T HE DECADE OF THE 1970s has seen both a changing and an increasing role for women activists and their supporters in American politics. Though not always victorious in the pursuit of their goals of economic, social and political equality, feminist groups and their supporters have experienced considerable success for relative newcomers to the political process. An ongoing and unified womens movement has been created although it will be demonstrated that despite general support from womens groups, lobbying efforts by feminists have become functionally specialized along issue-related lines. In this essay, the authors will consider the extent to which emergent feminist groups have been successful in influencing the American policy-making system. The kinds of issues most likely to foster additional successes and the techniques most useful in achieving political goals will be surveyed. In this latter context, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, the anti-sex discrimination provisions of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the antiabortion Hyde Amendments of both 1976 and 1977, and the Amendment to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which would end discrimination in employment on the basis of pregnancy or preg-

Community Activism in the USA: Catholic Hospital Mergers and Reproductive Access

This article analyzes how grassroots organizing diminishes the potential loss of reproductive services in communities affected by Catholic hospital mergers. The empirical contribution of this study is to highlight changing patterns of pro-choice social movement mobilization and approaches to conflict resolution in the reproductive rights arena. To discover how Catholic hospital mergers threaten access to reproductive services, five case studies based in diverse regional and demographic areas throughout the USA are developed. From the case studies, we analyze which organizational factors most strongly influence the preservation of services. Among the variables which may affect outcomes are: characteristics of the acquiring institution, the type of coalition created to terminate the merger, the failure of pro-life activists to counter-mobilize, incentives for compromise on both sides, and regulatory intervention by government or state action. The study concludes that this new phase of the abortion struggle represents renewed vigor among local pro-choice activists and demonstrates that grassroots coalitions who oppose the curtailment of services often preserve reproductive healthcare options in their communities by creating alliances with professionals and other coalition partners.

The Many Dimensions of Chinese Feminism: Breaking Feminist Waves by Ya-Chen ChenTransnational Migration, Media and Identity of Asian Women: Diasporic Daughters by Youna KimMajority–Minority Relations in Contemporary Women’s Movements: Strategic Sisterhood by Line Nyhagen Predelli and Beatrice Halsaa

This article reviews three books that compare different aspects of feminism and women’s movements. Chen’s analysis contrasts feminist activism in Taiwan, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and Hong Kong. Youna Kim analyzes the migration of Asian women from Korea, China, and Japan to and in London. Nyhagen Predelli and Halsaa examine the relationship between majority and minority, or ethnic women’s organizations, in Norway, Spain, and the United Kingdom. All are ambitious efforts, based on interviews, to provide new insights into the study of women’s citizenship and participation in comparative perspective. Chen shows how Western feminism was useful to Chinese women in all countries but also represented an ideology that they needed to modify and change in accordance drawn from 2002, which dates it a bit with their own cultures and traditions. Noting that mainland feminism is not the only one worth discussing, for each nation, she shows both progress made and limitations for feminism. For example, in the PRC, the recent history related to the Cultural Revolution, Tiananmen Square, and the Fourth World Congress on Women—the major woman’s organization, Fulian, was abolished during the Cultural Revolution, and autonomous feminist movements were difficult to sustain. The Party supports abortion but in practice limits female births only, according to Chen. She suggests that when feminists in the PRC did turn to the West in the 1990s, they did so to France. In Chen’s interesting analysis, this turn was practical because it was primarily theoretical and therefore “safer.” Hong Kong feminism is treated in a more cursory fashion, given its current dependency on the PRC, though she does note its emphasis

Championing Child Care. By Sally S. Cohen. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. 397p.

Sally Cohen has written an important and comprehensive analysis of child-care policy in the United States, challenging the conventional wisdom that no such federal policy exists and that child care is not a major government priority, in contrast to other democratic welfare states (e.g., the Scandinavian countries and France).