Factors Hindering Proactive Dietary Management Awareness and Dietary Behavioral Change: From the Perspective of Gender Bias in Dietary Habit Improvement Learning Practices

Abstract

Since before World War II, dietary habit improvement and promotion activities been primarily carried out by housewives with nutritional science serving as the learning medium. However, what was the original intent of dietary management? And why was it necessary for housewives and women to be responsible for it? In this paper, we hypothesize that gender bias is one of the factors hindering gender-neutral and proactive dietary management awareness and dietary behavioral change as well as attempt to clarify how this bias has been constructed in the process of learning and practicing dietary habit improvement. Results suggest that nutritional science has been positioned as a field of dietary management leveraging women’s abilities and autonomy since before World War II in Japan, and that this has been made possible by lifestyle improvement promotion activities, the learning practices of those in female-dominated profession, and a Japanese-style welfare society.