Re:Japan's tax laws get in way of more women working full time
by eska on Friday March 08, 2019 @10:28AM
(#19338324)
Rayiner, thank you for your reply to my comment.
I might have worded it poorly, but it wasn't my intention to imply that the author of the article blames the law for it. I was merely trying to point out explicitly why this article is about women, and that it's not due to discrimination by the government through law. Furthermore I don't even think that this happens indirectly as you pointed out as possibly the case with your comparison to voter ID.
I also tried to mention explicitly that the "gender norms" you refer to are apparently mostly not imposed by men on women, but women on women. The article doesn't discuss this at all, instead mentions men spending less time with housework (which they probably even do in single households), etc.
The article doesn't claim that the law is intentionally discriminatory. It says that the law disincentivizes women to work, which can be true even if that is not the intent of the law. Stricter voter ID requirements don't facially discriminate between different groups, but they still have the effect of suppressing voting by minority groups because of how they interact with other social factors.
And the underlying claim is an uncontroversial one in economics: tax or welfare benefits that phase out with higher incomes disincentivize work. That's a generic truth about economics. It just happens to be a "woman's issue" in this context because (1) women happen to disproportionately have the lower paying jobs, because of gender norms; and (2) Abe's government is trying to get more women in the workforce to deal with Japan's crushing labor shortage.