IGS Seminar “Gender Matters: Being a Foreign Academic in Japan”

Dates: Tuesday, 16 February, 2021  15:00-16:30(JST) 
Online Symposium (zoom webinar)

In Japanese academia, women are severely outnumbered by their male counterparts. In 2015, women held only 23% of full-time positions and 29% of part-time university positions. Reasons for this gender imbalance (which exists in academia outside Japan as well) have been attributed to women holding fewer advanced degrees, publishing fewer research papers, spending more time on pastoral care of students, and dealing with family duties. Foreign female researchers in Japan are also outnumbered by their male counterparts nearly three to one. Some suggest that this is merely a matter of demographics; there are simply fewer foreign women in Japan than there are foreign men. In this webinar the two speakers will discuss the myriad of issues that shape the personal and professional identities of foreign women teaching in Japanese universities. Diane Hawley Nagatomo will broadly cover the multilayered manifestations of English language teaching as gendered and racialized practices that were presented in an 2020 edited volume entitled Foreign Female English Teachers in Japanese Higher Education; Narratives from Our Quarter. Richa Ohri will talk about her personal experience of being racialized as the ‘lesser other,’ especially when looking for a job as an English instructor. She will also discuss the representation of women as the ‘lesser sex’ at the workplace. Both these concepts intersect and have impacted and shaped her personal and professional life in Japan.

Speakers	Diane Hawley Nagatomo (Ochanomizu University)
	Richa Ohri (Chiba University)
Coordinator	Yoko Totani (Institute for Gender Studies, Ochanomizu University)

Prior registration required, Registration Form

*Simultaneous interpretation available (English-Japanese)

Organizer: Institute for Gender Studies (IGS), Ochanomizu University