- Today, the government released the white paper on lifestyles for
the fiscal 2001 with a subtitle "Family, Lifestyle and the Structural
Reform". It is suitable that the white paper reviews lifestyles
from the viewpoint of "how to work", "child bringing
up, care, and support", and "practical use of IT" through
examining "families". However, it is not acceptable that
its arguments and analyses only propagandize Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi's structural reform plan, which proposes a labour system that
promotes more diverse ways of working.
Actual people's life is frightened uneasily by the unemployment, worries
about bringing up children and their education and gets exhausted
with care. Furthermore, community-based mutual support has been increasingly
weakened. The current reform plan of the government does not lay out
policies to overcome the uneasiness and worry of the people.
- The white paper advocates shortening of working hours and more flexible
full-time work, selection of part-time work, outsourcing and/or labour
saving of domestic work, including child-rearing.
However, it does not indicate measures to respond to wage gap, discriminatory
treatments and the instability of part-time work. Although the government
blows its own trumpet, claiming that the regulatory reform in the
labour market is sure to enable men and women to work in a more flexible
way on equal conditions and find a new job more easily, its eyes are
tuned away from worsened working conditions and increased unemployment.
- In the area of child-rearing and care, the importance of "improving
nurseries", "expanding the participation of family members"
and "establishing the system of child-rearing leaves". However,
the white paper does not daringly analyze that long working or portal-to-portal
hours of husbands hinder their participation in housework and child-rearing.
It insists that the Child-care and Nursing-care Leave Law has automatically
enable men and women to make work compatible with family responsibilities,
but a reality is that very few men make full use of the leaves.
- It is very important to analyze problems of families and lifestyles
from the viewpoint of a family. However, while the white paper the
highest priority to a value that a full life should be realized based
on his/her own choice, it fails to assess how public policies have
been supportive to create an atmosphere to realize a full life. The
white paper should not propagandize public policies, but should make
precise analyses on their effectiveness and results.
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