Shining Women: Representations of Women and Work in Contemporary Japanese TV Dramas

Abstract

This thesis considers the increasing visibility of working women in Japanese TV dramas by analysing three recent dramas from 2016, Nigeru wa Haji da ga Yaku ni Tatsu, Jimi ni Sugoi: Kōetsu Gāru Kōno Etsuko, and Eigyō Buchō: Kira Natsuko. It situates them within the broader social, cultural, political, and economic context to examine contemporary discourses of women’s labour force participation in Japan. It pays particular attention to the Abe government’s Womenomics initiatives which aim to boost women’s participation rates and representation in the workforce in response to significant demographic challenges and a stagnating economy. The government’s rhetoric of empowering women through ‘creating a society in which women shine’ has been critiqued as a form of neoliberal feminism. This thesis supports such a contention and argues that it is worth considering the interconnectivity of neoliberalism and post-feminism in contemporary articulations of women’s work. It argues that each of the three dramas demonstrate elements of post-feminism through a complex interweaving of discourses of women’s empowerment through paid work with traditional gender norms that reinscribe female caregiving and domesticity. It also contributes to a growing body of work that demonstrates that it is both necessary and worthwhile to consider post-feminism beyond the ‘Western’ context. Through analysing dominant discourses of women’s labour force participation, this thesis considers what subjectivities are included in the construct of a ‘shining woman’.