Career Woman or Housewife? : Japanese Female University Students’ Attitudes on Gender Roles

Abstract

This paper aims to explore Japanese female students’ attitudes towards gender roles. It is a longitudinal research study of four years from 2014 to 2017 focusing on how young Japanese university students view two news articles regarding women’s gender roles, and what choices and decisions they may be triggered to make in the future. The result shows that among 308 participants who demonstrated their perceived gender roles as women, an average of 74.75% voiced the willingness to continue their career even after they get married and/or have children. This resonates with the result reported in the news article in 2011 that 65.8% wish to continue their career even after marriage. The result also suggests a significant leap in women’s attitude and perception change over the last few years. However, there is no significant change shown in the percentage of becoming housewife. Although the result indicates a slightly higher percentage of becoming career women in 2014 and 2016, in general there is no distinguished difference found in between.