Faculty of Literature and Social Sciences

Socializing Care and Promoting Gender Justice

Sumika Yamane
Associate Professor
Department of Human Sciences and Cultural Studies

▲Report of a questionnaire survey of refugees

Viewing Care as Labor

My research themes are care as labor and gender issues. Human beings have to depend on somebody else when they are born, when they are children, when they get ill and when they get old. Rearing and nursing of those people who have to depend on somebody else are called care. Care has so far been seen as women's duties done at home. Care is enjoyable, but at the same time, it is physically and mentally demanding labor. I believe that supporting of people who provide care labor and socializing of care will eventually make care receivers happy.

▲IC recorder is indispensable to interviews

▲Translated books

▲Books on care in Japan and other countries

Supporting Post-Quake Child Rearing

Children and the elderly are vulnerable at the time of a disaster. Nuclear pollution in the wake of the nuclear power plant catastrophe triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 has been impacting on small children and their families. In order to clarify the situation of children and their parents who fled Fukushima to Yamagata, I conducted a questionnaire survey and interviews covering refugee families jointly with a local nonprofit organization. As a result, we learned that many people feel isolated in their refugee lives without their husbands/fathers and many parents and children feel mentally and physically disordered. This pointed anew to the necessity of reducing the loneliness and burden of people who provide care labor with the community's support.