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What Women
Want
By: Yuki Allyson Honjo
Family
or career? Duty or self-satisfaction? Saint or sinner...What do
women want? Who do they want to be?
Nancy Rosenberger does not have a simple answer to these rather
fundamental questions in her book, Gambling with Virtue: Japanese
Women and the Search for Self in a Changing Nation, but she
does explore these issues in some detail. Women all over the world
have struggled to balance the various arenas of their lives. Throughout
the postwar period, women's roles in the workplace and family
have been particularly dynamic: women have had to make constant
adjustments. As one woman in Rosenberger's book commented, "No
matter what path they choose, women's hearts are always in a quandary."
The role of women has been particularly dynamic in Japan. Just
as Japan grew from an emerging economic power to a fully-fledged
bubble economy and then to the hangover that followed, Japanese
women have been urged to aspire to different goals that reflected
the national agenda. Although women differ in the extent in which
they embrace social expectations, the ideas disseminated by government,
media, schools, and the workplace defined the social parameters
of what is or is not acceptable.
Rosenberger sets herself a daunting task: she explores how Japanese
women define themselves in a changing national landscape. It is
a difficult task to map out the aspirations of 50% of a population
as large as Japan, even one as supposedly "homogenous" as Japan.
To further complicate matters, the picture is never static: women
constantly conform and maneuver within the multiple arenas of
their lives. Rosenberger follows the experiences of Japanese women
through the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and pieces together a mosaic through
a myriad of interviews.
Rosenberger uses two ideas to bind the disparate women together.
First, she uses the idea of "virtue" as form of fungible social
capital—hence her title. "Virtue" is described a the pull
that women feel toward prescribed roles as mothers, daughters,
or wives. The other is the extended metaphor of theater: both
men and women have a "front-stage" (prescribed roles) and a "back
stage" space where they express their more personal emotions and
wants. Each individual learns to shift their body movements, language,
and actions when they move from scene to scene. Everyday life,
according to Rosenberger, requires a certain amount of skill in
performance.
Rosenberger slaughters some ideological sacred cows. She explodes
the idea of Japan as a homogenous nation by interviewing a wide
range of women of differing social status, wealth, education,
age, and locale: their stories are necessarily disparate. Stereotypes
of Japanese as sociocentric beings (versus American as egocentric
or individualistic selves) are dismissed. She operates on the
supposition that all individuals have both inner wants that long
to be fulfilled, but at the same time, are embedded in social
settings with a variety of obligations. How each person acts in
each situation depends on how the individual chooses to fulfill
these obligations or desires.
Rosenberger traces how the "play" changes through time: public
discourse on the "idea" place of women has shifted through time.
In the 1970s, Rosenberger describes lives that were highly institutionalized
and gendered. Women's choices were limited: those women who chose
to work lived regimented lives, and social expectations were followed
to the letter. Women were encouraged by schools and government
to maintain a "Japanese" identity in the face of rapid economic
change. However, Rosenberger illustrated that, even in the 1970s,
women had found ways of fulfilling their own desires. Although
freedom and individualism may not have been the primary goal in
the national discourse, women nonetheless stretched the boundaries
of "virtue" to accomplish their goals. In the 1980s, the discourse
shifted with the economic boom: women were encouraged to express
their individuality to illustrate Japan's progress by taking on
"western" hobbies. They were asked to aspire to become part of
a new national "middle class" by playing more, spending more,
and pursuing outside interests. A decade later, women were charged
with internationalizing the Japanese social arena by becoming
global citizens. Women were pushed in yet another direction: they
were urged to retain the ideals of individuality at the same time
as maintaining a uniquely "Japanese" national identity.
Rosenberger's interviews illustrate how an individual's physical
and emotional well-being is tied to how adeptly one manages these
often conflicting demands. Take for example menopause: both women
and medical professionals asserted that the exhaustion and moodiness
had a psychological cause, as well as a biological one. Rosenberger
records prevailing beliefs that a person with good healthy energy
(ki) and is at peace with her "self" would have less severe menopause
symptoms. Doctors would "prescribe" weight loss and an outside
job to relieve their symptoms: weight loss was good for health
and self esteem, and work gave a woman sense of purpose. In some
cases, the women in Rosenberger's book found this advice helpful;
the work kept their "mind and spirit" young, even if it was physically
exhausting.
In other cases, the result was not so happy: severe menopause
was diagnosed as autonomic nervous disorder, or "nerves", and
treated as such. Much like the nineteenth century Victorian diagnosis
of "hysteria", which was ascribed to any number of physical and
psychological problems in women, "autonomic nervous disorder"
was used in Japan as a catch-all diagnosis for any sort of psychological
instability in middle aged women. It was tacitly implied by both
the medical community and the women themselves that the side effects
of menopause were the fault of women: a weak "spirit" resulted
in a severe menopause.
Rosenberger is an anthropologist at the Business Anthropology
Program at Oregon State University, and the book reflects her
training: it is first and foremost an ethnography. She concedes
the limitations of her methodology in the introduction: in sketching
out each of her subject's experience in rich detail, the reader
does indeed have the chance to hear a multitude of women's voices.
She treads a fine line between generalizations based on anecdotes
and identifying trends, but never grossly breaches it. However,
because she focused only on personal experiences, the reader sometimes
lacked context on national trends. It is not always clear how
Rosenberger defined the "national discourse" and how it was formed
and disseminated. Also, Rosenberger does not directly address
the limitations of her interviews: in a study of role playing,
surely her subjects played a "role" for a foreign researcher.
Are women any happier now than they were in the past? Do more
choices mean that women are more fulfilled? Rosenberger posits
that having more options does not necessarily translate into greater
happiness. Like men, women feel the pull of wants and obligations.
The secret to a happy life, alas, remains obscured. 
Yuki Allyson Honjo. "What Women Want." The Asahi Evening News.
September 15, 2001. Pg. 24.
Throughout
post war period, women's roles in the workplace and family have
been particularly dynamic: women have had to make constant adjustments.
As one woman in Rosenberger's book commented, "No matter what path
they choose, women's hearts are always in a quandary."
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