Coming off the height of conference season in Australia, I reflect on recent events and my first experience attending an Asia-Pacific joint conference in Japan.
As an Asian-Australian woman in STEM, I was eager to gain an insight into the Asian research community and network with peers; to break the ice with our common ancestry despite the geographical distance. But I quickly realised I was naively trying to project my laid-back ideal of Australian conferences onto Japan.
Unseen were the familiar scenes of an ethnic- and gender-diverse early career researcher cohort, women in leadership like my own supervisor, and mingling with very casually dressed lab heads. Instead, from the first day in the main conference lobby, I found myself suddenly lost in a sea of middle-aged Asian men dressed uniformly in starch white collared shirts and dark pants. In my colourful T-shirt and sandals, simple attire for an out-of-office environment and the tropical weather of Okinawa, I momentarily feared I had entered the wrong venue. Scanning the room, I was intrigued by professors bowing and exchanging physical business cards they held out with both hands, with students bowing even lower to show respect. During poster sessions where coordination was needed to navigate the high multi-way traffic of people, I spent more energy than usual, apologising profusely while veering to avoid senior men wearing backpacks and standing in the middle like roadblocks. I was left overthinking about whether I had received business cards respectfully enough, with two hands, and if I had disrespected a male senior for needing to push past them.
I appreciate that my own cultural heritage has deepened my understanding of such social practices and the importance of showing respect for senior positions in Asia. Yet it soon became clear that my Australian upbringing has added an unspoken distance and sheltered me from the realities of living in countries like Japan as a woman in STEM. These observations immediately brought to mind a street interview video I watched years ago, which exposed the unfavourable societal view of Japanese women pursuing academia. Gender imbalance is reported to be high in Japan especially: fewer female researchers, shorter careers and lower likelihoods of promotion, lower representation in senior positions, and less citations of papers written by women. I also recall the Tokyo Medical University scandal, where entrance exam scores were altered to restrict the number of female students and produce more male doctors.
The country’s deep-rooted Confucian values of women’s roles as “good wives, wise mothers” (ryosai kenbo) and collectivist conformity have made it difficult for women to challenge traditional norms. Diversity quotas and other attempts of affirmative action have been initiated, in hopes of increasing university admissions and challenging gender images of disciplines (e.g. STEM being considered masculine). But other avenues such as involving parents and teachers – and society as a whole – may also be needed to ensure these figures recognise their role in shaping the future of women in STEM in Japan.
About the contributor
Mei Du is a bioinformatician in Melbourne, Australia, dedicated to supporting children’s medical research through the analysis of biological data.
The original pages
As published in Issue 4: Limitless. Click any page to view it full size.
First published in Issue 4: Limitless, the Innately Science newspaper.