Gender Equality | Yoko Sato (Dean, Faculty of Nursing and Medical Care)
2006.10.05
A recent newspaper article was titled, "Percentage of Female Professors a Mere 3%" (Yomiuri Shimbun, September 5, 2006). It was about the University of Tokyo, stating that the percentage of female professors among all professors at the university is only 3.8%, which is just one-third of the average for all universities. The article noted that at a time when an increase in female faculty is being called for from the perspective of gender equality, the backwardness of this top academic institution has been brought to light. I don't know the percentage of female professors at Keio University as a whole, but at the Faculty of Nursing and Medical Care, female professors make up 65% of our entire faculty. Incidentally, 70% of the full-time faculty at the Faculty of Nursing and Medical Care are women. This is a common situation in nursing universities and faculties nationwide, and in fact, the percentage of female faculty at our faculty might even be on the low side.
If we exclude the nursing universities and faculties that have been rapidly increasing in recent years (reaching 142 schools in fiscal year 2006, including national, public, and incorporated universities), the average of 10.5% for female professors across all universities would likely be even lower.
While on the subject, let me introduce the "leaders" of private nursing universities and faculties. According to the "2006 Directory of the Japan Association of Private Colleges of Nursing," out of 58 member universities (four-year programs), female nursing faculty members serve as president at six schools (with male nursing faculty members as president at two other schools), and women serve as dean at 26 schools (one of whom is from a non-nursing field). In other words, in the world of nursing universities, not only are female professors common, but so are female "leaders."
Personally, I have never considered myself a feminist. I believe that having a good personality, being intelligent, being sociable or not, and so on are personal differences, not related to gender. (Does thinking this way make me a feminist?) However, I have recently found myself thinking more about the differences in social activities based on gender.
(Date of publication: 2006/10/05)