Institute of Social Science The University of Tokyo

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Research Staff

Mari Osawa

update at 02 June 2016

Division Department of Comparative Contemporary Societies
Research fields Comparative Gender Analysis of Social Policies
e-mail osawa@iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Teaching and Research Appointments

October 1988 −
March 1998		 Associate Professor, Institute of Social Science, Univ. of Tokyo
October 1992 −
February 1993		 Guest Professor at the East Asian Institute, Free University of Berlin
October 1994 −
November 1994		 Marie-Jahoda Professor (International Visiting Professorship of Feminist Studies) at the Ruhr-University of Bochum
November 1997 −
January 1998		 Visiting Faculty at Gender and Development Studies, Asian Institute of Technology
April 1998 − Professor, Institute of Social Science, Univ. of Tokyo
January 1999 −
March 1999		 Visiting Faculty at Gender and Development Studies, Asian Institute of Technology
February 2000 −
March 2000		 Visiting Faculty at Gender and Development Studies, Asian Institute of Technology
June 2001 Visiting Faculty at Gender and Development Studies, Asian Institute of Technology
November 2002 Visiting Faculty at Gender and Development Studies, Asian Institute of Technology
May 2006 − July 2006 Fellow of the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg
April 2015 − Director, Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo
June 2016 − Mercator Fellow for DFG Research Training Group　1613 "Risk and East Asia"

Publications (2015- )

Selected publications ( -2014)

  1. “Bye-bye Corporate Warriors: The Formation of a Corporate-Centered Society and Gender-Biased Social Policies in Japan”, Annals of the Institute of Social　Science, 35: pp.157-194, March 1994.（1997年にドイツ語訳、98年にはイタリア語抄訳を刊行）
  2. “People in Irregular Modes of Employment: Are They Really Not Subject to　Discrimination?”, Social Science Japan Journal, 4(2): pp.183-199, October 2001.
  3. “Twelve Million Full-time Housewives: The Gender Consequences of Japan's Postwar Social Contract”, Olivier Zunz, Leonard Schoppa, and Nobuhiro Hiwatari (eds.), Social Contracts under Stress, The Middle Classes of America, Europe and Japan at the Turn of the Century, New York: Russell Sage Foundation: pp.255-277, 2002.
  4. “How has the Lost Decade Started? Issues of the “Corporate-Centered Society” and its Reforms in the Early 1990s”, Carl le Grand and Toshiko Tsukaguchi-le Grand (eds.), Women in Japan and Sweden, Work and Family in Two Welfare Regimes, Almqvist and Wiksell International: pp.45-62, 2003.
  5. “Koizumi’s ‘robust policy’: governance, the Japanese welfare employment regime and comparative gender studies”, Hook, Glenn D. (ed.) Contested Governance in Japan, Sites and iIsues, London and New York: Routledge Curzon: pp. 111-129, 2005.
  6. Gendering the Knowledge Economy, Comparative Perspectives (co-edited with Walby, S.; H. Gottfried; K. Gottschall), Basingstoke and New York: PalgraveMacmillan, 2007, p. xiv+322.
  7. “The Livelihood Security System and Social Exclusion: the ‘Male Breadwinner’ Model Revisited”, Lenz, Ilse, Charlotte Ullrich and Barbara Fersch (eds.), Gender Orders Unbound? Globalisation, Restructuring and Reciprocity, Opladen and Farmington Hills: Barbara Budrich Publishers: pp.277-301, 2007.
  8. Gender Equality in Multicultural Societies: Gender, Diversity, and Conviviality in the Age of Globalization, co-edited with Tsujimura, Miyoko, Sendai: Tohoku University Press, 2010, pp.291.
  9. “Gender-Equality and the Revitalization of Japan's Society and Economy under Globalization,” a Background Paper for the World Bank, World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development, 2011.
  10. Social Security in Contemporary Japan, A comparative analysis, London and New York: Routledge/University of Tokyo Series, 2011, 222.
  11. Gender, Diversity and Tohoku Reconstruction: Governance Challenges and Opportunities Two Years On (ISS-GCOE Research Series No. 6), co-edited with Steele, Jackie F., March 2013.
  12. “Japan’s Postwar Model of Economic Development has Rendered Japanese Society Vulnerable to Crises and Disasters”, Tohoku University Global COE on Gender Equality and Multicultural Conviviality in the Age of Globalization GEMC Journal, Vol. 8, 2013.3: 22-40.
  13. Invited speech “Japan, a country where income redistribution deepens poverty” at the Workshop for Comparing East Asian and Southern European Welfare States, held in the Collegio Carlo Alberto, Torino.

Topics of research

Comparative Gender Analyses of Livelihood Security Systems: Faces of Social Exclusion and Reforms for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion
Since the third fourth of the 20th Century, under accelerated economic globalization and post-industrialization in advanced industrialized countries in particular, existing livelihood security systems centered around welfare states have reached an impasse. Welfare states revealed their inability or at least difficulty in covering the new social risks, and increasing individuals cannot afford to live an average life and therefore finds it difficult to participate in the society. This project, funded by the Grant-in-aid of scientific research (A) from FY 2007 through FY 2009, tried to make comparative analyses from a perspective of gender and social exclusion on the situations that have taken place in “Livelihood Security Systems” in Japan, Germany, Sweden and Korea. The four countries are classified as the “coordinated market economies” in the “varieties of capitalism” theory, while the United States as a typical “liberal market economy” has always been referred by this study. With the funding by the Grant-in-aid of scientific research (A) from FY 2010 through FY 2012, this study extends its scope to include the United States as well as China, Thailand and so on, and examines faces of social exclusion and reforms being introduced in their livelihood security systems.

Educational Activities in 2016

Graduate School of Economics, Univedrsity of Tokyo Comparative Social Policy
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