Bashing on Female Assembly Member with Baby

Not only as the devastation of a great earthquake or home of small oyster, Kumamoto came to be known to the world as the place where the right of women is restricted. Kumamoto City Assembly issued a reprimand to its female member, Yuka Ogata, who brought her seven-month-old baby into the hall last month, causing forty minutes delay of opening the session. The assembly chose not discussing how a mother of young baby could work as a representative of citizens, but excluding such a mother as a burden of their activity.

Ogata had been requesting the assembly officials about the baby last year, when she realized her pregnancy. She wanted to bring newborn baby to the assembly hall and requested to have a nursery room in the building, hiring a babysitter or provide with subsidy for taking care of the baby. The Assembly answered that she had to hire a babysitter by herself and take care of her baby in office room for the members.

After giving birth in April, Ogata was not in a good health and absent from the sessions. When she asked the assembly office a favor for a young mother, the answer did not make any difference from what she had gotten last year, defining the issue as a personal matter. She got frustrated with the attitude of the Assembly putting that important problem aside. “The social problem in Japan of low birth rate is caused by difficulty of incompatibility between working and raising kids. Although many people cannot stand with this wrong situation and raise their voices, nothing has changed. I could not find any way except sitting at the hall with my baby and wanted to make those countless voices of grief visible,” told Ogata.

Kumamoto City Assembly has a rule that any people except assembly members or the officials are recognized as observers and the observers cannot enter the assembly hall during the session. Recognizing the seven-month-old baby as an observer, the assembly leaders demanded Ogata to leave the baby to someone outside the hall. “While in the position to make rules, she did not obey a rule,” one assembly member with Liberal Democratic Party criticized her. Ogata had to call one of her friends and leave her baby during the session.

TV news reported the scene of some assembly members required Ogata to leave her baby outside. Some news broadcast an example of a female lawmaker of Australian Federal Parliament breastfeeding during a session this May, making clear contrast with the situation in Japan. While Prime Minister Shinzo Abe upholds mobilizing women for his political agenda of economic vitalization, LDP members are mostly negative on broader role of women in their community. It takes time for Japanese women to achieve true liberty in this country.