高校の部 2位
入道　優（同志社国際高等学校）

Redefining Pink

 Pink. A color associated with femininity, tenderness and affection. But for me, and many women living in Japan, all too often, pink can only paint a sad reality, for it is the colour of the Women Only Cars.
 The Women Only Cars in Japan is a product of Japan’s patriarchal society. They were introduced around 20 years ago, as a response to the growing number of men sexually harassing women on the train. To this I would like to ask, is this the only way to solve sexual harassment? Segregating men from women does not truly get to the root of the problem of men harassing or assaulting women.
 The Women Only Cars are one of the many examples of Japan’s patriarchal society. When we take a look at our Japanese society, we can imagine how hard it is to be a woman in Japan. From the Purikura Booth Business that makes hundreds of billions in yen off of giving young Japanese girls the opportunity to alter our faces to conform to our society’s beauty standards by making our eyes bigger, skin whiter, legs thinner. To the Hostess Clubs, where women make money solely off of letting men feel dominant and powerful through playing submissive roles. Through a survey conducted on 1000 Japanese highschool girls, Hostesses were reported to be ranked the 12th most popular profession. These are just a couple of the ways our society has normalized the objectification of young Japanese girls.
 In 2018, several leading universities in Japan were found to be guilty of purposely favouring men over women candidates in their admissions process. The universities did this because statistics have shown that male graduates stayed in the workforce longer than female graduates, and so, making men a more valuable investment in the long run. I would like to ask the audience, why is it that men stay in the workforce longer than women? One reason may be that the current working environment in Japan has not complied to the women with both a job and a family. Due to out-dated company regulations, women have a greater societal burden than men; they are forced to leave their jobs once they have children or must find a balance raising children whilst working. Now, going back to the admissions scandal, what if one of the reasons I am not admitted to a university is because I am a girl? Due to these unchanging regulations within these institutions, women are put at a disadvantage from birth.
 How can we assure that in the future, women will receive the same respect as men? Firstly, I believe that governments, companies, and schools in Japan have a duty in taking serious steps to create systemic change for long lasting results. Systematic change means finding sustainable solutions through instituting laws that protect all people equally. For example the legal age for marriage. In Japan, men are allowed to marry from the age of 18, whereas women are allowed to marry from the age of 16. One of the intentions of this law is to encourage women to play a traditional role such as being in charge of all the housework, thus permitting men to have more time to focus on their own careers. Changing laws like these can have a tremendous impact on our society. Secondly, in order to raise awareness on what needs to change, we must also have more inclusive conversations on Gender Equality. One way to achieve this can be to encourage more women to take an active role in politics. As of 2021, Japan ranks 165th out of 193 countries for the percentage of women in national parliaments. In order to be heard, representation matters. Ideally this means electing more deserving women into leadership positions and challenging the status quo.
 Learning from the fearless women who came before us－Ichikawa Fusae, the co-founder of Japan's New Woman Association, or Shidzue Kato, the first woman elected to the Diet of Japan－we should all actively participate in changing Japanese women’s narrative from sitting still and looking pretty in pink to becoming strong and independent in any color.