Sense of Community and Generatively of women who participated in the women’s movements in Japan: Learning from narratives of women as “ordinary people”

Abstract

After the Basic Law for a Gender Equal Society was enacted in 1999, feminist groups in Japan started to lose appeal to the younger generation and diminish in size and influence. This change indicates the weakening of the psychological sense of community (PSC) among contemporary Japanese women, which can undermine the power to prevent and solve the problems of human rights violations faced by Japanese women today. Based on interviews with three active members of a women’s group since the 1980s, this articles seeks to explore the PSC of the women involved in the women’s movement in the 1980s and 1990s and discusses the possibility of transmitting it to the younger generations. The interview questions focused on how ordinary women obtained the power of social change and how they sought to maintain generatively. The main findings were as follows. First, the fact that the experience of ordinary women is usually not recorded in written form makes it difficult for the younger generation to learn the process of empowerment. Second PSC of the women in the women’s movement in the 1980s and 1990s consists of feminist theory and the everyday experience as ordinary women. Third, their PSC can be observed among women who are in non-profit organization activities today. One contribution that community psychologists can make to the process of transmitting the PSC to the next generation is to participate in the community and to listen to the women’s voices and preserve them as written records.