gender equality

恋人の友達の北海道で英語の先生をしている人達が日本の女性問題について議論していたので書いた。日本の性差もんだいについて。
働く女性はこの問題にいつも悩まされているし、どうにか改善されたいと思っていると思う。
について書いてみた。

 I've been thought about this Sean's topic .
and I’ll write about my opinion here.
Gender inequality is in Japanese society and working environments as discussed in the article.
I think this article is very true.
Can Women save JAPAN? by IMF
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2012/09/steinberg.htm

Working in Japan, in a Japanese company one needs to make many personal sacrifices.
As you know, there is a problem of long working hours, working on holidays, status harassment, and sexual harassment etc.
but that problem are man and woman both have.
So, why do girls dream to be house wives? Why are they choosing not to be socially active for the country’s future?
Gender inequality problems have been caused by the gender consciousness throughout Japanese history.
I would say that gender consciousness is more evident in the Japanese countryside.

The consciousness stenciled from childhood is that a female is not already equal with a male.
As Ryan wrote in the comments
Historically, women in Japan were treated like property.  Women were just ornaments for men (as you can see in Edo-era drama) and women were not allowed to state their opinions in official situations.
Japanese women were wanted as a support for men.
After the rapid economic growth this situation has been moving towards change. But as you can see in the IMF article we still have that problem.
We can see a lot of gender inequality in Japanese words too.  As you know, Japanese have certain words that only a man should use, and that only a woman should use. Masculine words mostly use an imperative form,
Feminine words use humble, honorific, and polite forms.
For example, [Let's go]; for men: [行くぞ]、for women: [行きましょう].

Also, culturally Japanese men like a weak, obedient and silent woman who follows the man.  You can see in the case of idols like AKB448 that they are wont to as act as a little children even though some of the members are over 25years old.
So Japanese girls try to be well liked and they believe they have to act weaker than men.
One of my friends told me that when she first dated with a Japanese man she couldn’t tell him that she'd been to graduate school and that she actually works in government.  This is because they would come across as unwelcome attributes to the man.

Nowadays in Japan men still cannot admit woman as equals in the social system.
I’m always surprised by how men treat women in the workplace. I can see many glass ceilings, even in my work at the biggest advertising company in Japan.
For example, during my first year with the company I had to serve coffee or tea for all coworkers and it continued until another younger woman was employed there.
I had to go to nomikais with the boss and CEO just because I’m a woman and all I had to do there is serve alcohol and join in with the singing and dancing.
Now I’ve become a middle manager for the project, the glass ceiling has been more obvious.
It's very rare to see woman in any meeting. Mostly 10-20 people are in a meeting but I’m the only woman at the table. And at the meeting time I can't state my opinion very much.  This is because the hierarchy is determined by position, gender, and age.

Japan needs to change and it needs to be more open to accept different opinions and also WE strongly need to have the ability to take big actions.  We lack that quality so we’ve been declining in the current world economy.
I think this is the key to change all the wrongs for gender and workplace relations.  You have the key. We need to change our consciousness of gender and accept different opinions of sense and culture.
I think you have already given students stimulation for a new kind of social consciousness. You've introduced them to different opinions, cultures, and languages.
You have already shown your students that if you can dream and have curiosity then we too can live and work overseas.  It doesn't matter if you’re a girl or boy. The world around you is too small to know the entire world.