Name: What Japanese women are saying about discrimination in Japan
Uploaded: 2020-03-24T04:43:14.000Z
Duration: 16 min 8 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Some of you may have heard about the recent news here in Japan.

Basic passive voice

Tokyo Medical University was caught manipulating entrance exam scores in order to keep the

total percentage of female students below 30%.

What the investigation found was that they added extra points to every male test except for

men who had already failed the test multiple times previously.

This is after they were already caught last month accepting bribes in order to grant admission

to the children of prominent figures, which they also did by boosting their scores.

It’s been suggested this is a widespread practice and now the Education Minister plans

on investigating all medical schools in Japan.

The reason given for why this happened in the first place is that women quit their jobs

sooner than men in order to start families and raise children.

There is currently a shortage of doctors in Japan, but this has also been going on

for at least 10 years, and many suspect even longer than that.

Understandably, a lot people are really outraged about this here right now.

After this news broke, the hashtag #私たちは女性差別に怒っていい (which means, it’s okay for us to be angry

about sexism toward women) trended on Twitter, where Japanese women spoke out against

this issue and shared their own stories of discrimination they’ve faced so today I’ll

be using this video to translate some of their stories and get their voices out to a wider

I’ve been working as a teacher continuously for 20 years.

When my department changed the new head was male, and he said to me “If you haven’t

given birth or gotten married then you’re not complete and you shouldn’t be a teacher.”

I’ll never in my life forget that, but I’m living every day happy and smiling.

I was told the same thing by the president of the company I used to work for.

“You’re not married, you’re not complete, you don’t have the right to give your opinion

It’s been more than a decade and I still can’t forget it.

I’m working as a nurse, and when I was doing job hunting I was told the same thing by the

In my case, I think the head meant societally, too.

He even said things like I don’t deserve social security benefits.

I’m a man but I’ve also been told something similar by a lot of people, since I’m a

Acquaintances my age told me I’m defective as a human and I should grovel for forgiveness

The people who said these things have probably forgotten.

I was a midwife at an obstetrics and gynecology clinic, and 30 minutes before I was about

to take leave for my 4th pregnancy the director called me in and fired me.

He’s able to earn a living because of women giving birth, and he still treated me like

I had been working at this company for a while when I got pregnant with my 2nd son.

When I told them I was pregnant, they called me into the president’s office and he smoked

When I reached 8 months pregnant, my boss called me into the conference room.

He said that until I wrote a letter of resignation I couldn’t go home.

I kept sitting there while they endlessly hounded me.

My physical condition wasn’t great, and half in tears I wrote my resignation.

From that day I became aware of the thinly veiled sexism toward women here, and I’ve

In the past, my last interview with a former state-owned traffic company’s board member.

“So in the future you’ll get married.”

“What if we order you to relocate to a different branch?”

“I’ll make sure to marry someone who understands.”

“I don’t think you’re being realistic.”

“We could visit each other on weekends.”

“I’ll use the maternity leave system…”

When he said “This is a man’s company, the woman’s job is give priority to the

When I was job hunting, in an interview with a real estate company president the first

thing he said was “Hnnn, I think this job is too tough for women.

You want to get married and have kids, right?”

I will NEVER buy a house from that company.

When I was job hunting the interviewer said this to me: “We don’t give managerial

And when I entered the job and let them know my desired department, they said “That job’s

At the next consultation, ask for a department more suited toward women, okay?”

The industry where I work is mostly male and sexist remarks toward women are an everyday

I got tired of expressing my indignation and to protect myself I started to ignore it.

From now on women in this industry shouldn’t have to go through the things I did or lose

This story is a little off the subject, but at night on the train a man stared continuously

at me, followed me through my transfer, then off at the next station, and then into a conbini.

I was scared so I ran to a police box and they said, “It’s your fault for wearing

At that moment the scariest thing to me was the police.

In the past, my male boss told me I was pretty good with technology for a woman.

He meant it as a compliment but all I could say was “Yeah…”

20 years ago in driving school my elderly instructor said “Even though you’re a

Subtitles ListPlay Video

What Japanese women are saying about discrimination in Japan

tough

boost

aware

manipulate