1. Facts about Elderly Women
1.1 Age group dominated by its female population
In Japan in 1992, there was a gap of more than six years between the average longevity of women, at 82.22 years, and men at 76.09 years. The average life expectancy at the age of 65 was 20.31 yearsfor women and 16.31 years for men. Although the difference in average life expectancy is narrowing, a four year difference still remains. This results in gender imbalance in the elderly population in Japan. The male to female ratio at birth is 100 to 105. The male-female ratio is almost equal in adulthood until around 60, after which the ratio of females increases with age. At the age of 65, women comprise 59.0 per cent of the population aged 65 and over, but among those aged of 85 and over, the male-female ratio is 1 to 2. The number of people over 100 years old was 4,802 in September 1998; 80.4 per cent of these were women. Thus, women make up an overwhelming proportion of the 'old-old' population. In other words, twice as many women live in the eldest age group and are prone to economic, social, family, and above all, health problems.
1.2 Elderly women and family relations -- single living
It is quite common to find elderly women living alone. In fact, two peaks of single-person households are formed by the young unmarried generation and the elderly generation. While the younger single-person households are mainly made up of men, the latter households are made up of women.
According to the Survey of the Status of National Livelihood conducted in 1993, the single-living elderly numbered 2,110,000, which was 11.7 per cent of the population over 65 years old. At present one out of ten elderly people is living alone, and 80 per cent of those living alone are women. Among women over 65 years of age, 15.4 per cent are living alone (one out of every 6.5 women). In contrast, 5.4 per cent of men of the same age group are living alone, or one out of 18.5 persons.
Women who remain single over their entire lifetime outnumber men, but the gap is not notable. Judging from the difference in longevity and the age gap between husbands and wives (on average, husbands are older by three years), the majority of the single-living elderly women seems to consist of widowed women. Indeed, there is a great difference between men and women regarding the rate of living with their spouses. Already in the age group 60-65, there is a gap of 30 points between men and women. While 90.2 per cent of men of this age group live with their wives, only 61.0 per cent of women live with their husbands. The gap increases by age group. More than half of those men over 85 years old (52.3 per cent), live with their wives, but the number of women over 85 living with their husbands drops to 6.1 per cent (National Census, 1985).
Along with the progress of nuclearization of elderly households, single-person households increased notably from 10.7 per cent in 1980 to 15.6 per cent in 1991, and couple-only households from 16.2 per cent to 22.1 per cent. Both increased by 50 per cent over the decade. Since couple-only households will eventually become single-person households, the number of elderly women living alone will continue to increase.
Here, we can predict a great difference in elderly life between men and women. Men face a high probability of spending all of their last years with family, while women are likely to live those years alone.
1.3 Facilities for the elderly and elderly women
As women face a greater possibility of becoming the 'last person' in nuclear families, they will have difficulty obtaining family care when they become weak. Their last resort will be care-providing facilities. Actually, 70 per cent of the presently institutionalized elderly people are women. The ratios of female occupants in various social welfare facilities are as follows:
| Nursing Home | 63.4 per cent |
| Moderate Fee-Charging Home | 72.6 per cent |
| Special Nursing Home | 67.8 per cent |
1.4 Health problems of elderly women
The greatest problems for the elderly in terms of health are the development of dementia and becoming bedridden. While more men suffer dementia in their 70s, a higher rate of women are affected by dementia in their 80s, and 23 per cent of women over 85 (nearly one out of four), have dementia of different degrees. As a whole, about 60 per cent of elderly people with dementia, and 57.6 per cent of the bedridden elderly, are women. However, this does not imply that rates of appearance of the two problems are higher with women. It may be a natural consequence of the population structure in which the absolute number of women in the old-age population is larger.
However, it should be noted that women are prone to diseases such as osteoporosis, rheumatism and Parkinson's disease, which are causes of becoming bedridden. Causes for becoming bedridden are not limited to cerebral apoplexy and other circulatory diseases alone. More research should be conducted into those diseases that tend to affect women in older ages.
In the United States, the women's movement has succeeded in obtaining budgetary allocations for research and development of medicines to cure hormonal imbalances which occur during menopause, which are the major cause for osteoporosis. They also complained that traditional research on heart diseases, one of the major causes of death in the West, had been male-oriented, and predicted a sharp increase in heart diseases among post-menopausal women. (Gale Sheehy, The Silent Passage, 1992). Concern about the health of middle- and old-aged women is gaining strength throughout the West. When the author visited Sweden and the United States of America in March and April 1993, women made strong demands for research and treatment of menopausal disorders, including heart disease.
The Japanese women's health situation is quite different from that in the West, due mainly to dietary habits. However, the ageing process of women after menopause differs from that of men in all countries. There should be more research into diseases occurring with high frequency among women such as rheumatism and osteoporosis in Japan.
Gale Sheehy says in the book, The Silent Passage that women are suffering from heart diseases and fractures of the back bone simply because they do not know how to care for themselves during their menopausal period, and osteoporosis was recognized as a major disease affecting daily life only five years ago. According to the book, osteoporosis patients now number 25 million people.
1.5 Elderly women's sexuality
The double standard of sexuality between men and women is the starting point of all forms of discrimination against women. Women's rights regarding reproduction have not yet been fully established. There is a large gap between the standards accepted by men and those by women regarding all sex-related behaviour and conduct. This limits women's freedom in life. The sexual double standard implanted in early childhood continues to regulate, metimes more strictly, the behaviour of people in their latter days. Old-age sexuality has not been fully researched, even for men. It is widely considered that sexuality gradually declines to nil as men become older. That is why sexually active men are given contemptuous terms like 'lustful old men'. But there is not even such a term for women. Women are not expected to have a libido at all in their old age.
Recently, however, some researchers have become interested in the sexuality of elderly people from a women's point of view. For example, Hideko Daikuhara published her paper based on a survey in a book titled You Cannot Talk About Old-age Life Without Sex.
A typical example of the double standard regarding sex is seen in elderly marriages. Japanese people have a strong inclination to get married. It has been said, however, that when women are widowed or divorced, their re-marriage occurs at a low rate. Elderly women, in general, are reluctant to enter a second or third marriage, as shown by women's opinions in newspaper readers' columns saying 'no more marriage'. This is also evident from the marriage statistics of the elderly population. Along with population ageing, both the numbers of marriages and divorces among people over 65 are increasing. In 1991, 1,482 men over 65 years old were married, while only 476 women did so. The aforementioned gap between the marital status of elderly men and women is partially caused by this gap in re-marriage rates. The motivations for marriage for men even after they become older seem to be to satisfy their 'sexual desire' and to find 'household caretakers', while women do not want to get married as long as they can be economically self-supporting.
When the author conducted a survey among middle- to elderly-aged women registered in a public marriage counseling institution about 20 years ago, a woman said 'I earnestly want to be freed from that duty', suggesting that sexual relations were her 'duty'. Were women of her time so subjugated sexually? If so, it is no wonder that they do not feel excited about a second marriage. Elderly people's consciousness of sexuality reflects their experiences in younger life. When they have positive experiences, their thinking also changes. In recent years, a new business which targets middle-aged and elderly people, tries to match life partners (Mugen-no-kai; Kyoto). Takako Fukunaga, author of Vital Old-age Marriage, declared at the age of 60 that she would look for her spouse, and she got married for the second time at 64. Views on people of the other gender or on marriage may change, but the author wonders if the double standard on sexuality will be narrowed so easily.
Another delicate and crucial issue relating to the sexuality of elderly women is how much their dignity is respected when they require care from others. Is any consideration paid to their sense of modesty when they are provided with assistance in bathing and excreting? How should male caretakers approach them? Should the principle of women taking care of women be observed even among elderly women? The gender-related problems of elderly women should be examined in future.
1.6 Elderly women's consciousness and their dependence
As the size of the elderly population grows, incorporating those who were born in the 1920s and 1930s, a great gap in consciousness and lifestyle is developing between those who grew up before the Second World War, and those who grew up after it. The period of the 1920s and 1930s in Japan saw the peak of the family - centered ideology as a means to mobilize the nation to support war efforts (in the name of the Emperor, as the father of the nation). Under this ideology was the principle introduced in the Civil Code of the Meiji Constitution which advocated fixed gender roles and family-centred consciousness. The system of education in the Meiji era trained each woman to become a 'Good Wife, Wise Mother'. 'Strength' to bear all kinds of hardships for the sake of the country was demanded of women during this militaristic period. Women were supposed to sacrifice themselves as good wives and wise mothers in the service of the family. 'Good wife' meant being obedient to one's husband, and a 'wise mother' was one who educated her children to be citizens loyal enough to lay down their lives for the Emperor.
Today's 'old-old' women were educated under the militaristic philosophy, and those living alone are suffering from a deep sense of loneliness. They have lost their roles as housekeepers, and must endure the ageing process which forces them to become dependent upon someone's help. They grew into adulthood during the time when a woman was often considered a bad wife if she tried to train herself, seek her own pleasure, and have her own friends. Further, these women find the new entrants into the elderly population have a very different consciousness.
In recent years, the concept of normalization was introduced from Scandinavian countries and it is becoming prevalent in Japan. The concept of normalization stresses the following three elements, i.e., the rights to self-determination, to self-sustainability and to regain abilities. Few oppose this idea. Looking back at the consciousness of older Japanese women, one cannot help but worry about their difficulty in exercising their rights to self-determination because they were educated to follow the decisions made by their husbands and other men and to never be a burden to anyone.
Suicide rates of elderly people were high in Japan even before the Second World War. They are still higher than the world average. The rate of suicide among women over 75 years old is second only to Hungary. The number of men committing suicide is larger than that of women, but because the suicide rates are higher for men all over the world, the rate of suicide by Japanese men over 75 years old ranks fifth in the world.
| Japan | Denmark | France | Hungary | Sweden | |
| Men aged 65-74 | 39.2 | 47.2 | 47.5 | 96.0 | 36.4 |
| Men over 75 | 72.2 | 69.2 | ... | 172.9 | 50.2 |
| Women aged 65-74 | 30.6 | 36.0 | 22.9 | 46.8 | 12.6 |
| Women over 75 | (2)54.9 | 33.1 | 25.3 | (1)74.9 | 8.3 |
Sources: Vital Statistics, Ministry of Health and Welfare and World Health Statistics Annual 1989-1990, WHO
Note: * 1987
In Nigata prefecture, frequent suicides by elderly persons living in multi-generational families occurred some years ago. Researchers found that those committing suicide were mostly women who killed themselves out of a sense of guilt. This was named the 'guilt-compelled-suicide syndrome'. They could not accept being cared for by other family members after all their long days of having cared for family members. This type of suicide was committed by elderly women who had no chance of developing themselves outside the frame of being a 'good wife and wise mother'. The high rate of suicide by elderly women in Japan seems to be deeply related with women's status and their imposed roles.
In general, bedridden men who are taken care of by their wives and children take this care for granted. The author felt this strongly when she carried out a survey among bedridden elderly people under domiciliary care in a farming village in Nagano prefecture. A man who had been in bed for 18 years was cared for by his wife in a room whose walls were hung with letters of honor given to him by the Agricultural Cooperative and other organizations. The family was from Kyushu Island, and settled in the village after returning from former Manchuria. They were successful settlers whose sons had taken over the farming business. The wife in her mid-70s had not visited her home in Kyushu for the last 18 years. She said in a reserved voice, "I want to go home even once while my sisters and brothers are alive". The husband did not seem to notice her unexpressed wish. He said something like, "My life has been good, after all, because I might have died in the Philippines", and "The taste of Matsugen's pork-cutlet-on-rice is so good; the one I eat at home is not that tasty".
A wife being cared for by her husband spoke between sobs, "I feel very sorry to be cared for by my husband". She looked as though she were shrinking both physically and mentally. Another woman the author met in the suburbs of Kyoto came out strongly to say to her husband, "You may be thinking that I should pass away as soon as possible, but I won't". Whether they 'shrink' or 'come on strong', women traditionally placed in a caring' position tend to entertain distorted, uneasy feelings when they are placed in a 'cared for' position. Women should be trained to gain mental independence from early childhood as they have a greater chance of living alone for a longer period of time. The 'good wife, wise mother' lifestyle was well-suited to the times when the average longevity was 50 years or so. The high rates of suicide among elderly women clearly indicate that such a lifestyle is no longer acceptable now that the average life span is over 80 years.
1.7 Elderly women and economy - why are they poor in their late life?
The greatest issue for elderly women is their poverty. It is when they become old that the consequences of gender roles (men as breadwinners and women as housekeepers) is explicitly revealed. While women are engaged in non-paid household work, they manage the household economy because in Japan generally, the husband's income is directly entrusted to the wife's control. There is no clear distinction between the husband's and the wife's share. However, when the husband is retired and starts to live on his pension benefits, or when the husband dies, the wife is forced to realize all the disadvantages of having been a non-paid housekeeper.
In the following, women's economic problems are examined under the headings of (i) annual income, (ii) pensions, (iii) housing, (iv) employment, and (v) asset formation.
1.7.1 Annual income
According to the Survey of the Status of the National Livelihood, the annual income of elderly households (husband over 65 years and wife over 60 years) in 1993 was as below:
| Pension | 1,588,000 |
| Wage | 882,000 |
| Property | 266,000 |
| Total | 2,898,000 yen |
It is noted that pension benefits are more than 50 per cent of the total income. Following her husband's retirement, the wife continues to control their home economy as before. However, their income certainly decreases. The average income of elderly households (2.75 million in 1989) is about half of that of average households. In some cases, the husband takes control of the household economy. The 1990 survey by the Welfare Bureau of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government shows that 60 per cent of elderly women receive less than one million yen a year (less than 500,000 yen - 36.6 per cent and 500,000 to 1 million - 22.3 per cent), while only 13.2 per cent of men are receiving below one million yen.
On the contrary, of those receiving more than 5 million yen a year, 22.7 per cent are men but as few as 3.5 per cent are women. Among single-households, 41.1 per cent of men are above the 2-million-yen income line, but only 24.1 per cent of women are above this line.
1.7.2 Pensions
Pension schemes have been developed mainly for employees and self-employed workers. Therefore, full-time wives are in an unstable position because they have never had a chance to participate in any pension schemes. Sometimes they are even exposed to the risk of not being protected by any pension scheme. When most of the income of elderly households is supported by pension benefits, women suffer economic disadvantage throughout the rest of their lives. At present, about the same ratio of men and women are beneficiaries of some pensions, but as the types vary, the amounts they receive vary according to the type of pension.
While a majority of women are beneficiaries of the National Pension Scheme, more than 70 per cent of men are living on employees' pensions. Considering that even those fully eligible persons can receive only 730,000 yen annually from the National Pension Scheme, it is easily understood why many women belong to a low income class.
| Women (per cent) | Men (per cent) |
|
| National Pension Scheme | 55.7 | 32.4 |
| Employee's Pension Insurance | 26.7 | 58.8 |
| Government Workers Mutual Aid Assn. | 4.8 | 13.7 |
Source: "Actual Life Situation of the Elderly" by the Tokyo Metropolitan Basic Social Welfare Survey, Elderly People's Life (1990)
In April 1986, the Pension Law was devised to include full-time wives of employees in the National Pension Scheme, which hitherto had been voluntary. It was meant to ensure that housewives would be eligible for pension benefits. Also, it was meant as a relief for women who divorced in their middle to older years. In spite of these improvements, there still is a risk of housewives becoming ineligible to receive their pension. They must register each time their husbands gain or lose employee status and they must pay a premium of over 10,000 yen a month (in 1992), even if they are divorced, or they are having trouble paying the premium for some reason such as failure of their husbands' business. They also may fail to pay premiums by mistake. For these reasons, full-time housewives of salaried workers are thought to be most at risk of becoming disqualified from receiving benefits, and poverty among elderly women caused by both ageing and being women will continue to expand in the future.
1.7.3 Housing
House ownership rates do not differ much between men and women. Households with elderly members who have houses of their own are 85.3 per cent nationwide. The rates are lower in large cities. In Tokyo, according to the survey by the Welfare Bureau (1990), 82.2 per cent of elderly men and 76.6 per cent of elderly women had their own houses, a 6 point difference. In contrast, among single-living elderly people, those who have their own houses are at a much lower rate of 54.4 per cent. Among them, more women own their own houses (55.0 per cent) than men (51.0 per cent). The Tokyo survey notes that more women say that they have troubles with their living quarters. The number one problem is the deterioration of the houses, followed by 'eviction' from their present living quarters. Although not revealed in such a survey conducted by government offices, it seems likely that many elderly women sell their houses to move to other places when they inherit the properties after their husbands' death. Even after the collapse of the 'bubble economy', prices in large cities are still soaring. Children demand their share of the property at the level of those elevated prices. Even if the husband left a last will saying all the property should go to his wife, the children are due to receive their share according to the inheritance law. When she receives more than the normal share of 50 per cent allowed to the surviving spouse (when the couple has children), she must pay inheritance tax for the excessive portion. So the wife is forced to sell the house which is so familiar to her, unless she is the registered owner of the house. As husbands are the registered owners of houses in most cases, they have a greater chance to continue living in their house. Hence, the saying 'elderly women have no place to live in this world'. An 'owned house' is defined as being a house under possession of oneself, or some family member/s. At the time of a spouse's death, whether or not one is the registered owner (or co-owner) of the house has great affect. Therefore, in this kind of survey, the house of 'my', 'our', 'his', 'her' ownership should be clarified.
The law has been revised to allow transfer of house ownership to a spouse (without having to pay gift tax on the value of the house up to the limit of 15 million yen) according to the tax evaluation criteria, as long as he or she continues to reside permanently in the house, and have been married for longer than 20 years. With this revision, an increasing number of wives have ownership of a house to live in. However, they have had little chance to build up their own assets, and this may prevent them from being able to maintain the house after their husbands' death. More favourable rules should be applied to allow wives to inherit all the property used for daily living.
1.7.4 Employment and wages for elderly women workers
Employment opportunities for elderly people are limited, even during good economic times, when compared to young workers. As among the young, a wage gap exists between men and women. According to the survey by the Labour and Economic Bureau, Tokyo Metropolitan Government and Silver Human Resource Center in 1991, the average payment from part-time and short-term employment is 185,000 yen for men (per month) and 117,000 yen for women. The gender gap in payment appears to be narrowed as men are removed from the seniority system payment scale after their retirement. The gap, however, shows women's poor circumstances as many single women are compelled to work to support themselves.
Incidentally, the purposes of working among men is 1) to earn extra money for living, 2) to maintain health, and 3) to live a purposeful life. Women work 1) to earn extra money for living, 2) to live a purposeful life, and 3) to maintain health. This suggests that women too should work for their living. As a matter of fact, the number and ratio of women registered in Silver Manpower Centers is on the rise. However, not only do women earn lower wages, but employment opportunities narrow for older women. Unfortunately, at this point, no statistics are available as to the employment situation of the elderly by gender.
1.7.5 Asset formation
With less chance for stable and continuing employment opportunities, women have lower chances for asset formation. According to the Civil Code, assets must be registered in the name of an income earner. Women have no chance of earning income at all, or if they had been once employed, most of them quit working because of household work, child care and elderly care. It is not too much to say that the inheritance of their husband's property is the only opportunity they have to gain assets. And even with this sole chance, wives are sometimes prevented from having their own assets because of the tradition practiced in specific localities. In farming and other self-employment trades, wives, in addition to their household work make great contributions to asset formation and maintenance of their families. However, such contributions are not fully appreciated at the time of inheritance of their husbands' property, and they do not get their due shares partially because the division of property will affect the continuation of farming and other trades. This is clear from the fact that only 8.6 per cent of farming women have their own immovable property.
The World Action Plan announced at the middle of the United Nations Women's Decade (1976-1986) says, 'women share a half of the world population, one-third of the official workforce, and two-thirds of the total working hours. Nonetheless, they receive only 10 per cent of the total income, and own as little as 1 per cent of world wealth'. This is very true for Japanese women, especially elderly women.
2. Women as Caretakers
In addition to the many problems faced by elderly women such as those described above, there are equal, or even more important problems facing them. One problem is taking care of the elderly. At present, the burden of taking care of the elderly is shouldered by a far greater portion of women than men. Many working women quit working in order to take care of their parent/s. At this point, they lose their source of income, which eventually affects their asset formation and the amount of pension benefits they are eligible to receive in their elderly life. Health is another concern. Not a few women around the author have died out of excessive fatigue from caretaking. Health problems of caretakers have not yet been fully studied and, needless to say, measures to combat these problems have not yet been devised. In the field of occupational caretakers, a great majority of caretaking and nursing staff are women. Expertise in caretaking has not yet been firmly defined, and social recognition and due economic support for the work of caretakers is greatly delayed. The boundary between paid workers and volunteers is blurred; a characteristic of the status of women as caretakers.
2.1 Ratio of women caretakers
Various surveys show that from 80 to more than 90 per cent of family caretakers are women. The ratio of women caring for the elderly with dementia is higher (more than 90 per cent), than those taking care of the bedridden.
Male caretakers, mostly husbands, are on the increase in recent years. A remarkably heavy burden is placed on the shoulders of the wife of the son. Surveys on caretakers include 'Facts about the Bedridden Elderly' by the National Social Welfare Council in 1983, and the annual Survey of the Status of the National Livelihood by the Ministry of Health and Welfare. The Status of the National Livelihood in 1989 shows that 88.3 per cent of caretakers for the elderly in need of domiciliary care are women, including women living together or separately, and kin and non-kin, as shown in table 3.
| Caretake | |||
| Women | Men | ||
| (per cent) | (per cent) | (per cent) | |
| Family living together | |||
| spouse | 34 | 76.4 | 23.6 |
| child's spouse | 27 | 99.5 | 0.5 |
| child | 16 | 70.9 | 29.1 |
| parents | 8 | 82.6 | 17.4 |
| others | 4 | 86.7 | 13.3 |
| Family living separately | |||
| child | 3 | 79.4 | 20.6 |
| child's spouse | 1 | 99.4 | 0.6 |
| other relatives | 2 | 75.9 | 24.1 |
| volunteer helper | 1 | 92.5 | 7.5 |
| others | 4 | 79.5 | 20.3 |
Source: The Survey of the Status of the National Livelihood in 1989, Ministry of Health and Welfare. Note: People needing domiciliary care are not necessarily people over 65 years old.
From this table we can see that the son's wife, one's wife, and daughters are the three major caretakers. It is calculated that the elderly living together with family are taken care of by 1) son's wife, 26.9 per cent, 2) wife, 26.0 per cent, 3) daughter/s, 11.0 per cent, 4) husband, 7.9 per cent, and 5) son, 4.7 per cent.
In urban sectors, the rates shared by the 'son's wife' are being replaced by those of 'wife', yet the portion of 'daughters' remains the same. When the wife gets sick earlier than the husband in a couple-only household, the husband cannot escape from the work of providing care, hence, the rate of men taking care of their wives is on the rise. It is predicted, as a result of the small number of children in a family, that the son's participation rate will increase in the coming decades when the present-day young become middle-aged. At the moment, however, the paternal system is still deeply entrenched regarding who has the burden of caring for old parents.
Is there any way to reduce the burden on women, in particular, on the son's wife in a family? One way is to promote equal sharing of the burden between males and females. The other way is to increase the use of outside help, both public and private. People's opinions on who will take care of aged parents is rapidly undergoing a change. Those now in their 30s and 40s are clearly withdrawing themselves from the role of caring for their parents. In a survey in 1981, 72.6 per cent of those in their 30s and 40s replied that 'mainly the spouse, children and relatives' should take care of their parents when they become bedridden. In 1992, those who gave the same answer to the same question dropped to 55.7 per cent. (Survey on the 'Life and Care of the Elderly People', Administration and Coordination Agency, Prime Minister's Office, September, 1992). Instead, those who replied "Welfare institutional care should be sought to fill the insufficiency of family care" increased from 24.1 per cent to 37.5 per cent over an 11 year period.
Another key element is the change in women's consciousness. Consciousness between men and women clearly differs as to whom they want to have to care for them when they become bedridden or in need of care by others in daily living. According to the above survey, 70 per cent of men specified their 'wife' to be their caretakers, while only 19.7 per cent of women answered 'husband' as desirable caretakers, and of others, 28.2 preferred 'son's wife' and 15.8 per cent 'daughter/s'. Notable were their replies about the use of outside help. In the survey, 'housekeeper', 'home helper' and 'institutions and other occupational caretakers' were prepared as optional answers. All combined, only 9.9 per cent of the male respondents said they would look for outside help, while double that number (19.5 per cent) of the female respondents said they would seek outside help. Although this rate is lower than the rate for those expecting the son's wife's care, it is higher than their expectations of their daughters and sons, and close to their possible dependence on their husbands by only a 0.2-point difference. Because women face a greater probability of becoming widowed, or if their husbands remain in good health, women do not expect them to learn household chores, women are more inclined than men to place their hope on outside care.
When men and women are combined, those who prefer that their spouses become their caretakers rose from 36.7 per cent to 44.0 per cent, while those in favour of their son's wife dropped from 27.7 per cent to 17.1 per cent over 11 years. Expectations of their own sons and daughters remain unchanged, while the three choices of outside help gained greater favour from 8.0 to 14.9 per cent.
Apart from such conscious change, dependence on outside care will increase because there are fewer children in a family to provide care. Mobility of company employees also prevents children from living close to their parents. In rural areas, however, little change seems to have occurred. As the media demonstrate, the responsibility of the wife of the first son is still heavy as can be observed on occasions when relatives gather such as on New Year's Day and the Bon Festival (departed souls' home-coming festival). The ratio of parents living with a child's family is declining, but it is still outstandingly high compared with other industrial countries. The majority of the elderly are living with their son's family, and the parents' expectations of care from their son's wife are higher than expectations of outside help, including care from their own daughter or son. The declining birthrate is a public concern today. Low birth rates are brought about by an increase in the late marrying and non-marrying population. It may be that women hesitate to get married because they can see their future as bearing the burden of household work and caring for their husband's parents. Although the actual number is not known, there are increasing numbers of husbands who move alone to a new company assignment leaving their wives at home in order to take care of the husbands' parents. Until recently, husbands who have been transferred have moved alone for the sake of their children's education, but now they are moving alone for the sake of their parents.
3. Care and Women Suspending their eployment
Concentration of the burden of caring for elderly parents on full-time housewives seems to have occurred as a natural consequence. Women are also forced to quit working or switch to part-time jobs when parents or parents-in-law need care. In the seniority and lifelong employment system, part-time women workers' wages are much lower than full-time working women's wages. And once a woman stops working, she will suffer a wage disadvantage when seeking new employment. Traditionally, the number one reason for women employees to quit working has been 'child delivery, and child rearing'. The female workforce in Japan reaches its highest peak when women are in their early 20s and the bottom when women are in their early 30s and bearing and rearing children. There is a second peak in women's employment when they are in their 40s after their children have grown. This forms what we call the 'M-shaped line'. Now among middle-aged women workers, the dilemma of quitting work to care for ageing parents is coming to the fore. In the survey on Women's Employment conducted by the Prime Minister's Office in 1989, child rearing was still the primary reason which prevented women from continuing work, but the survey also noted that the second most common reason preventing women from continuing work was their requirement to take care of elderly and/or ill family members. As a result of these findings, there is a mounting demand from trade unions and woman's organizations that they be granted 'elderly care leave'. The Women's Bureau of the Ministry of Labour set up a study group to look into this problem, and published guidelines for granting leave to take care of elderly family members at home. Some studies are also being undertaken regarding the problem of women and employment in relation to this leave.
According to the 1992 survey on Care of the Elderly and Employment of Family Members by the National Institute for Employment and Vocational Research, 92 per cent of the main care givers are women. Among of these, 43.9 per cent were employed when they started caring for their family members; 34.4 per cent were forced to change their working styles; 23.8 per cent had to quit working; 6.9 per cent reduced their working hours and 3.7 per cent changed work. In fact, one out of 4 women quit working when there was a need to give care at home. Their short total working period, suspended once for child care and again for elderly care, gives women smaller amounts of wages and pension benefits, leading to a poor livelihood in their own elderly lives.
In the survey by the Ministry of Labour in 1991 on the situation of the Workers Actually Taking Care of Elderly Members at Home, the following were the highest priority requests made to the company's welfare system: 1) granting care leave, 2) selecting working hours, 3) provision of care personnel, 4) loans for extraordinary expenditure, and 5) reduced working hours.
One option for protecting women from being forced to suspend their work might be legislation of care leave. The author is in favour of this idea. However, this would not present a decisive solution to the problem that providing care is regarded as a women's responsibility. Because if applied improperly, care leave may contain elderly care within the family, as is the case now, and such responsibility would continue be shouldered unilaterally by women. As a result, women (wives) will take the care leave, which easily leads to resignation. Incidentally, in Sweden where the public system is firmly established to liberate the family from elderly care, there is no care leave. They have only the Family Care Law that allows workers to take a leave within a month of terminal care. Therefore, the more important thing is to define elderly care as part of public responsibility and make men take joint responsibility in the efforts.
4. Status of Nursing/Care Workers
In institutions, the overwhelming majority of workers are women. In hospitals, 97 per cent of medical nurses and 100 per cent of nursing assistants are women. In homes for elderly people, 98 per cent of workers are women. For domiciliary care services, 99.9 per cent of home helpers are women.
Public attention regarding the need for more nurses and caretakers is growing. To support this, the 1992 law promotes recruitment of medical nurses and other medical personnel. Other policies have been put forward in the past few years, such as the establishment of 'Nursing Day' which honours nurses, a review of salaries for nurses (by the Personnel Agency), and the introduction of care and welfare workers. Nevertheless, nurses and care workers are not getting sufficient recognition. The medical nurse is one of the most established jobs with expertise. Their starting salaries were raised after the review by the Personnel Agency, but they are surpassed in the middle of their career by clinical examiners and X-ray engineers. The gap in salary might be because the nursing job is considered to be mainly for women.
The expertise of the keepers and helpers working for the elderly should be urgently defined and recognized. For this purpose, the Japan Nursing and Welfare Association was founded in October 1992. Professional associations of care and welfare workers have also been formed. While the expertise of care and welfare workers is beginning to gain recognition, home helpers are still considered to be on a par with housewife's work. The status of home helpers as a matter of fact varies from one locality to another. Some home helpers are protected by social insurance while others are not; some are working on a yearly renewal contract, and some work on a fixed pay scale without any raise. Levels of experience are not considered when determining salaries for some, and some work in an unstable position. A major obstacle to admitting to the expertise of home helpers is the long-cherished concept that household work is provided free of charge.
One hundred and twenty four thousand occupational housekeepers across the country are working in hospitals which provide non-standard nursing care, and in geriatric hospitals, to help in-patients. Since they are not working on a contract with the hospital, they work under very bad working conditions, in spite of their earnings, compared to part-time jobs.
Women who have suspended their employment because of child care, husband's job transfer and elderly care are expected to work as care staff. Lately, their participation as 'care volunteers' and 'collaborators' has been requested by society. In cities, fewer and fewer son's wives take care of their husbands' parents. Instead, they are expected to be 'community caretakers'. The 'No tax, 1 million-yen part-time income barrier' is functioning to confine the housewife workforce to working as 'community caretakers'. (A housewife's income if under one million yen per year is exempted from income tax. The wife is then included as a dependent of the husband and her salary does not affect her husband's tax payment).
Since the United Nations Year of Women in 1975, there has been a move to establish the right of women to work. The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) was enacted to defy division of roles based on gender. On the other hand, the governments' expectations of women in the ageing society come into sharp relief when looking at recent policies and legislation: the revision of the Pension Law in 1985 to consider housewives as husbands' dependents under their umbrella, and the institution of and raising the limit of the special spouse deduction (1987). These seem to say to women, 'When you finish your child care, please return to the workforce as part-timers, and when your parents become ill, please return home to take care of them.
Now every local government is obliged to make a Health and Welfare Plan for the Elderly. How much are women's voices reflected in the process of planning? The main actors in welfare services for the elderly are the municipal, township and village governments. Women are only 5.6 per cent of the members of all municipal, township and village assemblies, and in the national parliament, women occupy only 14.7 per cent of the seats in the House of Councilors and 24 per cent of the seats in the House of Representatives. Women's representation in the House of Representatives in Japan ranks 110th out of 130 countries in the world. Although deeply involved in ageing, women in Japan are severely alienated from the decision-making process in the ageing society. Here is another serious problem for women.
5. Gender Roles and the Ageing Society
In 1985, the final year of the United Nations Women's Decade (1975-1985), the Japanese government ratified the treaty abolishing discrimination against women. The treaty was the crystallization of the women's liberation movements prevalent in the latter half of this century. One of its characteristics is that the treaty lists concrete cases of discrimination against women in detail in all phases of human life. Unlike traditional laws and treaties, it examines both existing written laws and traditional customs worldwide, and based on these observations, the treaty presses member states to make every effort to change the conventional societal framework which assigns particular roles to men and women. While the treaty urges women to go beyond their customary roles, it encourages men, with equal importance, to review their traditional roles. In its preamble, the treaty emphasizes that both men and women, and also the community, have joint responsibilities to bring up children to be good citizens, and that men's traditional roles in the family and society should be reformed together with women's roles in order to achieve equality between men and women.
Traditional fixed gender roles - men working outside and women keeping house and providing child care - and the consciousness that went with these roles, were considered 'morally good' in the past. But now, traditional gender roles are being questioned from the standpoint of women's human rights, the need for well-balanced development, and attaining peace.
Changes are actually taking place, but the gender role concept is deeply rooted in Japan. There are many, not only among men but among women, who resist changes. But even though they are not convinced of the need for change from the viewpoint of women's rights, they would admit the contradictions implied in the traditional gender role concept when they consider adapting themselves to life in an ageing society. The gender role concept was developed and advocated in times when the average life span was around 50 years, and having many children was a normal state of the family. Now that life spans have been prolonged to about 80 years for both men and women, the family life cycle has been undergoing structural changes. Although such changes occurred equally to both sexes, its influence has been exerted only on women. In fact, women were exposed to the wave of change much earlier than men just because of their longer average longevity, and in response, women's consciousness has been changing.
In the latter 1960s, long-established, 'conservative' magazines targeted at housewives began taking up the topic of 'housewives' purpose of life', often in favour of a lifestyle directed to social involvement beyond the conventional fixed gender roles of housewives. In the following two decades, three out of the four major housewives' magazines ceased to be published and the remaining one was renovated. The term shufu meaning housewife has now become a specific term and fujin, a polite expression for women is now replaced by josei, meaning women, as opposed to dansei, which means men in official statements.
As discussed above, their gender role is causing women to become economically poor in their elderly life. However, it is also preventing men from spending a fulfilling elderly life. They may be economically advantaged, but their daily life is largely dependent on their wives, even in mental aspects. As mentioned before, they tend to place great expectations on their wives when they become needy of care in daily life. Although they are in a minority group, there are quite a few husbands who are taking care of their wives because the wives have become ill and weak before their husbands. At the moment, among those who are taking care of their spouses, men account for 20 per cent. Men can no longer escape from the responsibility of looking after their weakened wives. Almost all violent incidents surrounding the care of the elderly are caused by men serving as the main caretakers. In fact, murders and suicides committed by caregivers and compelled out of exhaustion, are sometimes reported in the media. In the Greater Tokyo area alone, it is said that 29 such incidents happened in the 13 years between 1974 and 1986.
In 1992, when the author visited a town in Fukuoka prefecture, the town was filled with a rumor about two 'elderly caregiver' incidents that had happened one after the other. One was a joint suicide by an elderly couple who were living together with their son's family. The other was the murder and suicide by a son who had looked after his elderly parents alone. In both cases, men were the main care providers. Of course, there are also many cases of violence caused by women who in early old age set fire to the house, or kill their mother-in-law. But although an overwhelming majority of caregivers of the elderly are women, violent incidents caused by male caregivers are occurring at a disproportionate rate. One explanation for this may be that men have not acquired the primary skills required for daily living, house-keeping and care giving. It is the double-edged sword of the gender-role concept. On one side, women have been deprived of opportunities to train themselves to become economically self-reliant, and on the other side, men have been deprived of chances to learn the basic knowledge and skills necessary for daily life. Being self-reliant in daily living is essential for men to maintain a healthy and sound lifestyle after their economically-active period ends.
The second answer would be, again as a by-product of the gender role practice, the lack of skills on the side of men to ask for other's help. Serious problems with elderly care that could lead to murders and suicides can be avoided even with the aid of the existing and insufficient welfare services. But men do not know where to turn or how to approach such services. They have spent their lives working outside the community where they live, and they know little about the services available in the community. In addition, they do not want to lose face by asking for help from others. As a result, they fail to access social services.
With low self-reliance in daily living, poor skills in using available social services, and little socialization outside their relations at their work-places, it is natural that the quality of men's elderly life should be poor. A survey by the Japan Consumer Information Center reveals that among single-living elderly men and women, women are enjoying more enriched meals in spite of their low income, because they have their cooking skills to rely on until they become too weak. Single-living men tend to spend their extra money eating out and drinking alcohol. According to a survey conducted at elderly people's clubs in Yokosuka city, alcohol dependence is increasing among the elderly, particularly men. Retired men are exposed to the risk of falling into a vicious circle of becoming alcoholic, losing social interaction, and becoming further addicted to alcohol.
It is obvious that men should be self-reliant in everyday life despite the barrier of conventional gender role practice. The higher their level of self-reliance, the less will have to be spent on social services for them. Also, provision of adequate social services will prevent tragic incidents from occurring.
The concept of a society in which men and women live together with an equal status has taken root during the United Nations Women's Decade. And this concept of overcoming gender roles is most appropriate in a society of increasing longevity. Regardless of gender, self-reliance in life should be looked into from various aspects, and applied to both genders in the process of education. Along with learning skills for becoming self-reliant, opportunities should be provided to nurture a sense of solidarity and mutual help.
Starting in 1994, 'home science' became compulsory for all students in senior high school, in accordance with one of the requirements of the treaty abolishing discrimination against women. Both male and female students now must take four credits from one of the three related subjects, 'home in general', 'living in general' and 'skills in life'. All the subjects include the issues of 'life and welfare of the elderly to cope with the aged society', 'how to live my life as a step to contemplate how I and all humankind should live', and 'marriage'. These changes are natural and necessary in order to prepare students for their future.
Looking at the ageing society from the standpoint of women's problems, men's problems are mirrored. The traditional gender roles are no longer workable in the ageing society. The small number of children is threatening the survival of the paternally-inherited household system. From every angle, a society in which men and women are living and sharing equally best suits the ageing society.
Women are the leaders in current efforts to bring about such a society. They have the experience gained from actually working at the forefront of the ageing society. Unfortunately, they are much too occupied now with the unilaterally imposed burden of nursing and caring for the elderly. But there is a growth in women's organizations with a poicy-proposing function, including the 'Women's Association to Improve the Ageing Society' founded in 1983. It is said that the 21st century will become a century of 'aunties', and judging from the number of voters, it will be indeed the time when middle- and old-aged women can exert a powerful impact to reform society's framework.