Gender Equality in Japanese Education: Part Five -
Gender Bias in the Parental Allocation of Financial Resources for Education

J. Sean Curtin (Fellow, GLOCOM)

A full list of articles in this series can be found here.

Earlier installments in this series have illustrated how the decline in the number of young people in the population is helping to create a better gender-balance in higher education. Another aspect of this ongoing process is a gradual shift in the underlying dynamics of parental funding decisions about education. This is occurring due to the declining number of children per family, which is potentially increasing the amount of financial resource available to each individual child. As a result, the parental decision making process is becoming more gender-neutral and this in turn is challenging entrenched concepts about gender roles.

As the average number of children per family continues to drop, the family comprising of just one or two children has relatively more financial resources to invest in education than previous cohorts. This is the basic driving force behind the shift in parental attitudes. The decline in family size can clearly be seen in the average number of babies born to a woman in her lifetime, which is called the fertility rate. In 1950 the fertility rate stood at 3.65 children but by 2002 this had dropped to 1.32. The fall in the average number of children per family has been especially advantageous for girls.

During the first four decades of the postwar period, there was a strong gender bias amongst parents in the allocation of financial resources for education. On the whole, parents tended to invest more monetary resources in their sons than their daughters. There were a number of social and economic factors behind this trend.

One element was simply the large size of the typical family. Three or four children per family meant that cost factors were too prohibitive for the average household to send all their offspring to university. Thus resources had to be allocated and this process was influenced by gender-based concepts about higher education (see Part Four). Basically, a woman's primary roles were seen as that of a wife and mother and consequently her education was meant to reflect this. If household budgets permitted, girls would often be sent to two-year junior colleges which were half the cost of four-year universities. In large families, parents could usually not even afford to send all their male offspring to university.

Another important factor influencing resource allocation was the perceived returns from parental invest in higher education. A majority of parents believed that investing in their male offspring gave them the greatest economic return. The logic behind this stance was that childbirth and childrearing interrupted a woman's earning capacity, which was already lower than her male counterparts' due to a gender-biased employment structure. Thus, from the perspective of the average parent, it made little economic sense to invest in female higher education.

Over the last decade, the growing trend in one or two-children families has completely altered the dynamics of parental investment trends in education. This is especially true for one-child families, in which gender-bias based on the allocation of financial resources is greatly diminished, if not entirely eliminated. As the fertility rates show, the trend for having just one child per family is increasing and this will further erode gender bias in educational investment.

Related GLOCOM Articles

Gender Equality in Japanese Education – Part One: Male and Female Participation Rates in Higher Education
Social Trends: Series #42, GLOCOM Platform, 17 June 2003

Gender Equality in Japanese Education – Part Two: The Development of the Two-year Women's Junior College System
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Gender Equality in Japanese Education – Part Three: How Gender Imbalances in Education Impede Women in the Workplace
Social Trends: Series #45, GLOCOM Platform, 25 June 2003

Gender Equality in Japanese Education – Part Four: The Changing Nature of the University-Prospective Student Relationship
Social Trends: Series #47, GLOCOM Platform, 7 July 2003

Changing Attitudes towards Gender Roles in Japan: 2002 Snapshot
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Youth Trends in Japan: Part Two – "Parasite Singles" in Europe and Japan
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Youth Trends in Japan: Part One – "Parasite Singles" in the International Context
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Japanese Tax and Pension Reform Proposals 2002: Abolition of the Spouse Special Tax Deduction
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Living Longer, Divorcing Later: The Japanese Silver Divorce Phenomenon
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