While Japan is under fire from the U.N. for paltry efforts toward gender equality, their massive tax change proposal promises to push more women into the workforce.
Japan's August 30 election saw the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) soundly defeat the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Yukio Hatoyama was installed as the Prime Minister. By American standards, DPJ could be simplified as the more fiscally progressive party; their platforms include a freeze on sales tax, increases in minimum wage, free public education, and most notably, a $289-per-child monthly allowance for families.
How will DPJ possibly fund such a large monthly child allowance? The Japan Times reports that the DPJ proposes cutting tax deductions for spouses, which would force wives employed in part-time work into full time work. Since 1961, tax deductions for dependent spouses have discouraged women from finding full-time work. To remain qualified as dependents on their breadwinner husbands, Japanese wives operate under an effective income ceiling of 1.3 million Japanese yen, or $14,456.
The ¥1.03 million income ceiling for spouses compares with an average annual salary of ¥4.37 million for private-sector employees in 2007 -- ¥5.42 million for men and ¥2.71 million for women -- according to the latest data released by the National Tax Agency.It is common for wives to work fewer hours than their spare time from housework and child-rearing allows so they can take advantage of the system, which is widely regarded as giving housewives preferential treatment.
The DPJ says it wants to abolish the system under the assumption it has discouraged women from attaining economic self-reliance.
"The current tax system that particularly gives nonworking housewives preferential treatment is problematic and we think it should be rectified," then DPJ Secretary General Katsuya Okada said at a news conference Sept. 4.
The DPJ's assumption of power and accompanying promises, if implemented, will embody a major social change. Already, the Asahi Shinbun says,
As a result of the Aug. 30 election, the percentage of female Lower House lawmakers climbed into double digits for the first time, reaching 11.25 percent. Even so, that represented a rise of just 3 percentage points from the first postwar election in 1946, when women accounted for 8.4 percent.
Japanese law also currently requires that couples pick just one surname to be recognized as married, and unsurprisingly, couples most frequently choose the husband's. The DPJ has further vowed to abolish this policy, and encourage married women to keep their surnames.
Woo hoo!
Note: the picture is from a fistfight that broke out in the Japanese Diet, or Parliament.
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Japanese Ruling Party Pushes Women to be Wage-Earners.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/16124
What the hell is happening in that picture? What's that from?
Right-o. I thought it was hilarious but apparently it was mystifying! It's a picture of when a fistfight broke out in the Japanese Diet, or Parliament. http://amazing-events.blogspot.com/2009/04/extreme-parliament-fight-in-japan.html
Actually, the photo is from Taiwan.
I feel it necessary to add that in this series of photos at least, she is being publicly sexually assaulted. AFAIK, parliament members are not charged after these not uncommon physical confrontations.
Not hilarious.
... I think that image is in bad taste if it has nothing to do with the main article (especially since the woman in said picture gets sexually harrassed). One person even mentioned that photo is from Taiwan, which I'm starting to believe, at least judging by the watermarks.
If you're talking about the characters at the lower right, that's not Korean. That's either Japanese or Chinese. It's hard to tell. That's not to say that it's not a Japanese or Chinese photographer capturing people in Taiwan.
For the love of mike. Yes, those are Chinese watermarks, and the photos were probably taken from a Chinese site, but those are Japanese lawmakers. Here are two accounts of the incident in question, during a debate on July 25, 2003, on sending Japanese Self Defense Force troops to Iraq, in English.
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fd20030803pb.html
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1045269
Evidently, the MP is Yuko Mori of the opposition Democratic Party (or Liberal Party) of Japan (Minshuto), not Arimura.
As seen at the other link, she grabbed the face of then fellow parliament member, former professional wrestler Atsushi Onita, who was "protecting" the ruling party leaders. Allegedly, she also grabbed Onita's hair and struck him in the face, as well as hitting the person grabbing at her. No word on who it was who exposed her and allegedly grabbed her breasts.
Yes, it is hilarious that national lawmakers in a number of Asian countries (and others) participate in open brawls during televised sessions. They may storm the speaker's podium by the hundreds to disrupt speeches. Asians tend to look alike, I know.
It is a photo from the Japanese House of Councillors, kind of like the US Senate, sometime after 2001. The woman in the photo is parliament member Haruko Arimura, PhD, member of the Japan's conservative Liberal Democratic Party, with rare exception, Japan's ruling party from 1955 until 2009.
http://www.sangiin.go.jp/eng/member/members/profile/229.htm
While I was in Japan, she was noted in the press for sometimes revealing photos while participating in brawls on the Parliament floor, as above, when she sat or stood on tables.
The intense looking tanned faced man near the center of the photo is retired professional wrestler Atsushi Onita, also a member of the LDP, forced to resign after a sex scandal.
there is definitely an anonymous hand reaching out of the crowd and touching that woman's leg ... oh wait i think he is lifting her into the air. is it some kind of victorious or celebratory moment?
$239 a month per child is excessive. I don't see how cutting one tax and women going to work will generate the necessary money for that to work out. Especially with sales tax frozen. I'm not an economist but I really don't see how all of this is sustainable.
I think it's great women will get a chance to go to work. I do hope childcare is affordable. Making school free seems like it will be a big monetary help.
The Japanese government has traditionally believed that only young women should work, then they should become full-time wives and mothers. Thus there's been no support for working mothers, and therefore women who don't want or can't afford to quit working don't have kids. Japan has a huge demographic crisis, with a very old population, a low birthrate, a shrinking workforce, and a deep xenophobic opposition to immigration. So this is primarily an emergency measure to encourage Japanese to have children.
Just to add, because there are so relatively few children in Japan (1.2 per woman), there's a relatively smaller pool to distribute the money to. Thus the total cost is lower than you might think at first.
Healthful food in Japan is astronomically priced. It is not uncommon to find an orange for $4.50 or a cantaloupe for $30. This stipend may help to get some decent food into poorer kids' mouths.
I would love to see changes like this in our country. Unmarried people might not realize the extent to which the US tax laws penalize certain (albeit affluent) people who have equality of earnings in their marriage. It steams me up that I keep something like 10-15 percent less of my salary because I am a woman married to a man who makes the same amount as me as opposed to the guy next door who has a stay-at-home wife. Since women tend to make less on average than men, this phenomena provides an additional disincentive for married women to take the sorts of jobs that would lead to all women's eventual income equality with men of their same social class.
This is probably a dumb question, but if someone makes $N, and their spouse makes $N, do they currently in the U.S. pay more, less, or the same in tax than someone who makes $2N and has a stay-at-home spouse?
And, what do we think is the way it should be?
In the example you give in the USA, with both spouses earning the exact same salary, it would depend on their tax bracket and filing status. If filing jointly, it could be that their new bracket will be taxed at a higher marginal rate than their brackets filing singly - that is what some folks call the "marriage penalty". Generally, however, the tax brackets are designed so that the joint filing bracket is maintained at the same level as for two individuals filing singly. A couple is more likely to encounter the penalty, however, the more equal their incomes and the higher their combined income. It seems unfair for the tax code to penalize couples. After all, the income hasn't actually risen at all. And yes, I know that most married couples, particularly where there is a large disparity in income between the two, get a bonus for being married. That may also be unfair.
It really, really penalizes me, for the reasons you state. Its so bad that having two kids does not even come close to neutralizing the amount it penalizes me. If I didn't have immigration law reasons to stay legally married, I would not. Then I could afford to send my kids to private school!
I guess I don't understand what mechanism costs you more for having more equal incomes, as opposed to simply paying more for having a larger combined income.
SamLL,
I think the question you were asking was if there is a tax benefit to a married couple if one of the spouses doesn't work. The answer as best I understand is no. If one couple has two working spouses and together make $100,000 and another couple has only one working spouse making $100,000, presuming both couples are filing jointly, both couples will be taxed the same (although there are various tax credits and things like that).
But if you took that couple with each working and they weren't married, they would file singly, and they would end up paying less in taxes.
So there is a "marriage penalty" but no tax benefit for having a stay at home spouse (as best I understand).
But there is a tax benefit for having a stay-at-home spouse, in two senses of the term: 1) the working spouse receives a deduction on her/his tax return and 2) the lack of income (or large disparity) from the non-working spouse will tend to pull their joint income into a lower tax bracket than would have been the case IF the working spouse would have remained unmarried and filed singly. The key to marriage and tax benefits/penalties is that the tax bracket cutoffs are often different for single filing status and married filing status.
Some explanation of the photo would be nice....
From Aug. 3, 2003:
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fd20030803pb.html
[start quote]
The photos and footage of opposition lawmakers trying to prevent a July 25 vote in the Upper House on a Liberal Democratic Party-sponsored bill to send Self-Defense Forces to Iraq were all over the media last week, which is understandable considering how action-packed the Three Stooges-like melee was. Though Liberal Party member Yuko Mori and her slit skirt received the most attention, it was the LDP's Atsushi Onita who exemplified the meaning of the brawl. Onita is a professional wrestler. By protecting Foreign and Defense Affairs Committee Chairman Ryuji Matsumura from the opposition "ruffians," he was finally putting his talents to good use in the service of his party.
[end quote]
Onita is the tanned faced man near the center of the photo, the one whose face is being grabbed by the woman, MP Mori, as she is trying to stop members of the ruling party from voting in favor of the measure to send Japanese Self Defense Force personnel to Iraq. The article goes on to explain why Japanese parliament sometimes descends into these physical confrontations:
"The spectacle reinforced an image most people have of the political process: The ruling coalition doing what it pleases and the opposition vainly trying to stop it. The violence was a grand but empty gesture. Similarly, the planned merger announced two weeks ago between the Democratic Party of Japan and the Liberal Party was met with derision in the press, which simply saw it as another desperate attempt to lay siege to the LDP's impenetrable fortress of public support. But by the end of last weekend, the skepticism had mostly dissipated."
With rare exception, the conservative LDP of Japan has held a grip on power in Japan from its founding in 1955, until this month's election in which their majority coalition was voted out. The premier of Japan is usually the ruling party's head. Try to imagine how the US would be if Republicans controlled the White House and Congress for over 50 years running, and what the attitude of political opponents and the public would be.
The mystery to me while living in Japan is why people, particularly young people and women, would continue voting party members into office. A simplistic answer is people didn't know anyone better that they trusted. That finally changed this month when public frustration came to a head. What the Democratic Party of Japan will be capable of remains to be seen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_of_Japan
From Aug. 3, 2003:
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fd20030803pb.html
[start quote]
The photos and footage of opposition lawmakers trying to prevent a July 25 vote in the Upper House on a Liberal Democratic Party-sponsored bill to send Self-Defense Forces to Iraq were all over the media last week, which is understandable considering how action-packed the Three Stooges-like melee was. Though Liberal Party member Yuko Mori and her slit skirt received the most attention, it was the LDP's Atsushi Onita who exemplified the meaning of the brawl. Onita is a professional wrestler. By protecting Foreign and Defense Affairs Committee Chairman Ryuji Matsumura from the opposition "ruffians," he was finally putting his talents to good use in the service of his party.
[end quote]
Onita is the tanned faced man near the center of the photo, the one whose face is being grabbed by the woman, MP Mori, as she is trying to stop members of the ruling party from voting in favor of the measure to send Japanese Self Defense Force personnel to Iraq. The article goes on to explain why Japanese parliament sometimes descends into these physical confrontations:
"The spectacle reinforced an image most people have of the political process: The ruling coalition doing what it pleases and the opposition vainly trying to stop it. The violence was a grand but empty gesture. Similarly, the planned merger announced two weeks ago between the Democratic Party of Japan and the Liberal Party was met with derision in the press, which simply saw it as another desperate attempt to lay siege to the LDP's impenetrable fortress of public support. But by the end of last weekend, the skepticism had mostly dissipated."
With rare exception, the conservative LDP of Japan has held a grip on power in Japan from its founding in 1955, until this month's election in which their majority coalition was voted out. The premier of Japan is usually the ruling party's head. Try to imagine how the US would be if Republicans controlled the White House and Congress for over 50 years running, and what the attitude of political opponents and the public would be.
The mystery to me while living in Japan is why people, particularly young people and women, would continue voting party members into office, when people would complain so much about the government. A simplistic answer is people didn't know anyone better that they trusted. That finally changed this month when public frustration came to a head. What the Democratic Party of Japan will be capable of remains to be seen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_of_Japan
I don't think the surname change is a woohoo moment. Currently, 1% of Japanese men take their wife's name. Can the same be said in America?
A child is usually going to get AND pass on one surname. In Japan, 1% of married women pass on their own last name. Can the same be said in America?
The Japanese government forcing a couple to choose one last name means they actually have to sit down and consciously choose. Unlike America, where couples slip-slide and rationalize towards the usual (he keeps his name, the kids get his name [with hers as a second middle], and nobody quite knows what name(s) she's using today).
I'd say the Japanese surname policy actually eliminates the dialogue. With more choice, though U.S. couples may "slip-slide," at least they're talking about it. How many women do you think actually asked their Japanese husbands to take their name?
As I said, the percentage of Japanese marriages in which the husband takes the wife's name is 1%. Americans may talk about it, but do you really think 1 in 100 American men takes his wife's name?
My mom never took my dad's name in 32 years (so far) of marriage. I'll be pretty surprised if hypothetical wife wants to take mine. If she doesn't, we'll have to have that conversation about the kids.
That won't be a fair conversation, with her family, friends, and society in general all putting pressure on her to give the kids your name. She may not even realize that it's legal to do otherwise.
The problem with your argument is that a man taking his wife's name in Japan has a totally different meaning from what it would have in the US. There's a tradition of long-standing by which a man might take his wife's family name if she has no brothers so that the name might be carried forward and/or if her family is of higher socioeconomic standing.
In other words, it isn't necessarily being done for feminist reasons.
Whatever reason is given, the upshot is that 1 in 100 Japanese women keeps her name, passes it on to all her children (and future generations), and her husband takes her name. American women may be more likely to keep their own name (10% and dropping), but are far less likely to transmit that name to their husband and children or to ever see it passed down as the last name of a grandchild.
It's not a step forward to offer Japanese women that American invention: orphan-mom-syndrome.
I don't know if this is entirely a "woo hoo" moment. First of all, this is not going to be well-received by women who currently depend on that tax subsidy to make ends meet. Being catapulted into the workforce without necessary skills is only going to increase competition for low-wage jobs, since there is still a huge gender gap in earnings and job prestige in Japan.
Not having a full-time caretaker in the home will also mean that some families will have to pay for child care. Public day care slots are as precious as real estate in big cities, and private nursery schools can cost as much as college tuition in the States.
Not to mention the cultural norm pressuring women to stay at home to take care of children even into adolescence. In the long term, who can say what will happen with this attitude, but group behavior is much more resistant to change in Japan than in the U.S. I have no doubt that the DPJ is doing this to try to cut corners on the budget somehow (the declining birth rate will mean fewer payouts than they've been spending on the dependent spouses?).
yeah i just read this whole thing and while the stuff about names is interesting and the stuff about taxes even moreso (i am curious: is a stay-at-home spouse a dependent and if so, isn't that all the tax credit one should technically need to account for supporting them?), it was an explanation of this picture that i came back for.