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Originally Posted by ProfCrash
Personally, I could not see myself doing well in Japan. I have read a fair amount about the attitude towards women and the trouble women have staying in the work force and choosing their own lives ahead of marriage and a family.
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Women have the choice. They 'can' remain in the work force if they so desire it. They can have professional careers if they desire it. My dentist, my GP, and my lawyer were all women when I lived in Japan. It's just that most Japanese women don't
want to have professional careers. After age 25 they want to stop working. A few years at home while the babies are growing old enough to go to school, then they are completely free to do what ever they wish to from 7:30am when the kids leave for school until 8-10pm when they come home. They have enough money to do pretty much anything they wish to... take flower arranging classes or tennis lessons, play golf every day, take day trips with friends, learn a new language or musical instrument, etc... anything they want to do... or NOT do if they just don't feel like it that day! Just like being retired, but without having to work 25 years to get it.
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I have read about the Manga and some of the more obscene reading that denegrates women.
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Yes, there IS manga that denigrates women. But that accounts for less than 10% of all the manga. There are dozens of titles with no sexual content produced for school-aged children, teens, housewives, older folks, etc., etc. Same as the magazines you'd find in any magazine rack in any American city. Only a small percentage is sexual content, and an even smaller percentage is the sort that you describe.
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Stitch's story about his neice entering into an arranged marriage because she was 30 and the same for the man she married is just flat out wrong.
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Wrong? No... not wrong. Just a different cultural idea than we in the West have been brought up with. Considering that Japan's divorce rate is less than half of that of the US, perhaps it's our ideas that may need some correction?
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I can't see marrying someone I don't know because society demands it and if I want to be promoted at work I have to be married.
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And it's good that you live in a society that doesn't require that demonstration of stability, because that's what this requirement is all about... Stability and the ability to work together as a team rather than as an individual.
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Don't tell me that I need to stay at home and control all the finances. Just no. nononononononononononono
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No one would tell you that in Japan. Everyone is free to choose how they want to live their lives regardless of their sex or marital status. But Japan places the good of the group over the good of the individual. To get ahead there, you have to be a part of the group. Very different from the West, where we put such a high value on individualism.
Stitchawl