2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

As the top producer of Nobel Prize winners in science in East Asia – hailing from such campuses as Osaka University and the University of Tokyo – Japan’s longstanding nationwide dedication to rigor and excellence in STEM is world renown (Yang 2016). However, Japan faces a conundrum that will impact its position as a global powerhouse in higher education. Eclipsed by their male counterparts, females remain an untapped source of knowledge across important sectors of Japanese society. In fact, the most recent Global Gender Gap report by the World Economic Forum ranked Japan 102 out of 142 countries on the economic participation and opportunity scale (Bekhouche, Hausmann, Tyson, Zahidi, and Massoudi 2014, 9).

Our roundtable session will examine the professionalization pipeline for women faculty in the STEM disciplines in Japanese higher education. Guiding questions for this session include: (1) What are the contemporary realities that females experience throughout the P-20 pipeline; (2) How do women experience collegiate recruitment and hiring practices?; (3) What are female faculty levels of workplace satisfaction in STEM?; and (4) How has the professional status of women in STEM shifted as a result of Josei Kenkyusha Shien Modelu Ikusei (Support for Best Practice for the Promotion of Female Researchers)? The purpose of this session is to deconstruct the organizational biases that women face in higher education in an effort to enact change in Japan and foster women’s advancement globally. Our scholarly contributions to this roundtable are rooted in our experiences in higher education domestically and abroad.