FOCUS: DPJ policies could help more women start work, change their lives+

TOKYO, Sept. 16 Kyodo - Even before she begins her working life, Shiho Umeki, 22, said she had always planned to reduce her work after getting married, following in her mother's footsteps.

That was until the Democratic Party of Japan seized power in the
Aug. 30 general election.
The change in the political landscape has prompted her to rethink her future
plans, because the DPJ pledged in its election platform to ditch tax deductions
for spouses as a way of securing resources to finance part of the promised
generous child allowances.
The abolition, ''if realized, would be a historic changeover as it will bring
about a profound change in women's lifestyles,'' said Emiko Ochiai, a professor
of family sociology at Kyoto University.
Along with its policy of giving married couples the choice of using separate
surnames, it would give working women a supportive push, experts say.
''I thought after getting married that I would be a housewife working only at
an easy pace just like my mother, but would that become difficult?'' said
Umeki, a senior at Waseda University who is set to start working for a drug
company next April.
''It means society will change, won't it?'' asked the resident of Inzai, Chiba
Prefecture, in reference to the DPJ's plan to abolish the tax deductions. As a
part-timer her mother has limited her work so as to keep her income below 1.03
million yen per annum so that she would not lose her status as a tax-exempt
spouse.
The tax system under which breadwinners, mostly husbands, can claim exemption
for their spouses has been in place since 1961, under the Liberal Democratic
Party's almost uninterrupted rule of more than half a century.
The 1.03 million income ceiling for spouses compares with the average annual
salary of 4.37 million yen for private-sector employees in 2007 -- 5.42 million
yen for men and 2.71 million for women -- according to the latest data released
nearly a year ago by the National Tax Agency.
Many wives are believed to have worked fewer hours than their spare time from
housework and child-rearing in order to take advantage of the system, which is
widely regarded as preferential treatment for housewives.
But the DPJ is poised to abolish the system, believing it has discouraged women
from attaining economic self-reliance.
''The current tax system that particularly gives nonworking housewives
preferential treatment is problematic and we think it should be rectified,''
then DPJ Secretary General Katsuya Okada said at a press conference on Sept. 4.
The party is considering scrapping the tax deductions for both spouses and
dependents from fiscal 2011, when it plans to fully implement the monthly child
allowances of 26,000 yen per child, after distributing half the sum in fiscal
2010, party officials said.
The poor circumstances for child-rearing women to work in earnest should also
be addressed, however, such as the short supply of day-care services to look
after children while their mothers are at work, the experts noted.
The number of children who were unable to enroll and are waiting for vacancies
at licensed day-care facilities as of April jumped 29.8 percent from a year
before to 25,384, a record surge amid an increase in job-seeking mothers in the
economic slump, a welfare ministry tally showed Sept. 7.
''I'm worried about whether I can continue working after giving birth,'' Umeki
said. ''If the DPJ says it will change Japan, I want it to realize reforms that
women can say they are happy about.''
Another DPJ policy is to realize ''at an early date'' the choice for marrying
couples to adopt separate surnames in the context of gender equality, according
to its policy index for 2009.
Under Japan's Civil Code, couples currently have no choice but to pick either
surname, mostly the husband's in light of underlying social pressures, to be
legally recognized as married.
''I want the policy to be legislated as quickly as possible,'' said Noriko
Higuchi, a 50-year-old licensed dietician in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, who has
been campaigning for the option in a group since 1991.
''It will require no money nor will it force everyone to follow it, but it
would be encouraging for quite a few people,'' she said, explaining her own
experience of switching to her maiden name 18 years ago as a matter of
identity, seven years after being officially registered under her husband's
surname.
The social momentum for opening up the option by amending the Civil Code
increased in the early 1990s and culminated in a draft government bill in 1996,
but has since lost steam due in part to the recent tendency for fewer people to
marry and more women being allowed to go by their maiden names in business, as
well as opponents' campaigns, she said.
Ayumi Sasagawa, 45, who has lobbied LDP lawmakers to realize the legal change
in another group formed in 2001, said, ''Many people have already put dual
surnames into practice through such possible means as the use of maiden names
and unregistered marriages.''
''But everyone is fed up with various problems they face in their daily lives
just because their names are not legally recognized,'' she said.
The DPJ has repeatedly submitted to the Diet a bill to realize the option since
its de facto foundation in 1998, but has been barred by a reluctant LDP in
power, with its conservative members arguing that allowing married couples to
bear separate names would break up families and harm the country's traditional
values.
Although the DPJ did not put the policy in its election manifesto of priority
issues, it stipulated it in its policy index, providing enough reasons for
advocates such as Higuchi and Sasagawa to pin their hopes for such change on a
DPJ-led government.
==Kyodo
2009-09-16 22:49:42