The impact of the spread of COVID-19 on the way of working has been studied both nationally and internationally. Previous studies showed that women were more affected than men and that nonstandard and self-employed workers were more affected than those in standard employment. This paper extends these findings by showing how the impact on vulnerable groups differs within those groups during the expansion and convergence phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the impact of employment status and differences in occupation and education on personal income and living conditions was analyzed based on internet surveys conducted in 2021 and 2023.

The main findings of the analysis are as follows. First, although income level differed between men and women, the distributional relations between the incomes of those in standard employment, those in nonstandard employment, and those who were self-employed remained almost unchanged between the two time points. Second, the likelihood of perceiving that living conditions were worse than before COVID-19 was higher for the self-employed than for the standard-employment workers, and this trend continued. Third, comparisons of occupations among the self-employed showed no significant differences in the likelihood that self-employed workers would perceive living conditions to have worsened, although professional and technical occupations had an income advantage. On the other hand, being highly educated was found to reduce the likelihood of a worsened living situation. The results of the analysis suggest that self-employment can be a difficult working option for all but those who meet certain conditions.

The COVID-19 pandemic had various effects on children and the women caring for them. Simultaneously, it necessitated changes in child and childcare support in local communities. Using interview surveys with the staff members of the children's hall, of the district social welfare council, and of the nonprofit organization making “ibasho” in a metropolitan municipality, this study aims to provide a composite examination of how supporters in different positions perceived and responded to the problem.

The analysis suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic's negative effects may have had a certain universality. However, the changes on management brought about by the pandemic had some positive effects, such as encouraging users who could not come before to come to a place where support was offered. Further, this study presents three important findings concerning norms of care. First, one of the subjects expressed a dilemma about the fact that disinfection work occupied a large part of their daily activity. This can be interpreted as a conflict caused by the discrepancy between “weak care” and “strong care” by supporters. Second, the supporters' “bridging” role was important, especially for parents who were wary of professional assessments. This wariness maybe related to the norms regarding parental roles in Japanese society, which has a strong familial structure. And third, such “bridging” roles can solve problems of professional assessments.

The implementation of school events and the related manner of operations during the COVID-19 pandemic have been major concerns in many schools in Japan. This study focuses on school events and addresses two questions:（RQ1）What changes occurred in event cancellation?（RQ2）What factors influence the rate of event cancellations?

Unlike in 2020, schools tended to avoid event cancellations in 2021; however, school events were conducted differently than before the pandemic. In both years, schools gave priority to ceremonial events and tended more to cancel events with high risk of infection. A multilevel analysis of cancellation rates revealed that more variables at the prefectural level had an impact on elementary and junior high schools in the 2020 academic year. This implies that the collective situation of the prefectures may have had a unique effect in 2020, the first year of the pandemic. In addition, we found that elementary schools that place a high value on acting like nearby schools have a greater tendency to cancel events. We did not see the same effect in junior high schools, indicating that the decision-making process may differ between elementary and junior high schools. However, we also identified “teachers' busyness” and “parent participation in school activities” as common factors in elementary and junior high schools. “Teachers' busyness” increases the cancellation rate whereas “parent participation in school activities” reduces it. Therefore, the relation between the school and the parents during normal times may lead to different responses to the implementation of events during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Divorce exacerbates individuals' economic situations, especially for women. Thus, it is considered a key mechanism of the inequality-generating process over the life course. However, previous studies have focused only on the average effects of divorce on women's economic situations, and little is known about the heterogeneity in the effects of divorce. The economic consequences of divorce may be larger at the lower end of the income distribution in the Japanese institutional context, characterized by the high economic dependence of married women on their husbands, the limited role of the social security system, and the disparity of the safety net through employment and family. Thus, this paper aims to examine the heterogeneity in the economic consequences of divorce among women across the income distribution.

I use data from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers（1994-2020）and apply quantile treatment effect models with person-fixed effects. Results show that the effects of divorce on women's equivalent household income are larger at the bottom end of the income distribution. Their economic dependence on their husband is higher at this end when they are married, and thus the relative impact of the loss of their husband's income is larger. Overall, the buffering effects of income redistribution are limited, and the effective coping strategies available to divorced women are limited to remarriage and standard employment. These results suggest that divorce not only generates disadvantages for divorced women as compared to married women, but also drives the cumulative disadvantage process making the poor even poorer, because of the persistent gender division of labor and the social security system in Japan.

This article aims to reveal some of the methods for realizing “deliberation” in mass teaching lessons through interactional analysis of three lessons of “moral education through deliberating and discussing,” from the standpoint of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis.

With a focus on the core situation of deliberation that is “oppositional statements are confronted with one another,” our analysis revealed the following interactional methods.

First, a feedback format of “formulation + Question Tag（QT）” can confine a subsequent statement to a “statement about a formulated statement.”

Second, the “opposition elicitation format of QT,” including “how against it” can confine the “statement about a formulated statement” to an “opposing statement.”

Third, the “reference to ʞmuttersʟ” is also able to similarly and more strongly confine a subsequent statement, that is, confining it to a content of the mutters.

Fourth, opposing “mutters,” as a crucial resource for confining a statement, can be elicited by composing either or both parts of the “formulation ＋ QT” as “challenging.”

Fifth, by organizing a formulation part of “formulation + QT” as “fusion” and “accumulation,” the oppositional statement elicited by above-mentioned methods can be located in a larger oppositional figure on the scale of the entire class.

The findings of this article reveal new methods of formulation in teaching lessons, and know-how inherent in practice for realizing deliberation in school education.

This study aims to clarify that womenʼs discourses regarding their sexuality and career can convey either liberation from or conforming to their gender roles. Previous studies have analyzed womenʼs narratives of sexuality and career in womenʼs magazines, and have argued that such narratives have been regarded as a form of womenʼs liberation from their traditional gender roles and independence in the context of the womenʼs liberation movement in the early 1970s. Contrarily, some studies have suggested that women's magazines adhere to idealized figures of liberated women; however, most of the female readers who play peripheral roles in the workplace felt frustration with the idealized figures. In this study, we examined the backgrounds that define womenʼs narratives regarding their own bodies and careers in the magazine Bikkuri House, published between the 1970s and 1980s, because female editors at the magazine did not play a central role in the workplace, nor did they actively portray the idealized figure of women. First, our research found that the female editors were proud of their work, but did not see themselves as Career Women as described in the other women's media. Moreover, female editors find themselves standing at the opposite side of the traditional housewife. Second, we observed that editors and readers talked about their own body parts and experiences but many of their stories undermine themselves. Our analyses suggest that such narratives were created by the internalization of the gazes toward women editors thrown at them by both male editors and readers who can only capture women within a conventional framework. From these perspectives, this study contributes to previous research by presenting the narratives of individual and sexual liberation that may reinforce traditional gender roles, and highlight the importance of presenting idealized vision of sexual liberation.

The social environment of the urban communities, such as concentrated disadvantage, affects the lives of the people living there. This paper focuses on community attachment, which is “the strength of the emotional ties that residents have to their neighborhood.” If the attachment to one's neighborhood is influenced by factors specific to one's neighborhood, what factors might these be? Based on Wilson-Sampson's social disorganization theory of community as an analytical framework, we quantitatively clarified the determinants of community attachment. The data used in this paper were obtained from a survey of 50 school districts in the city of Nagoya. We used multilevel analysis, including variables at the neighborhood level. Our analysis revealed that people living in highly disadvantaged neighborhoods tended to have low attachments to their neighborhoods. The level of community disorder did not have a statistically significant association with community attachment. Contrarily, people living in areas with high average values of collective efficacy tended to be more attached to their neighborhoods when the variables such as the percentage of the population of newcomers are controlled. The results of this study are consistent with the analytical model based on Wilson-Sampson's social disorganization theory of communities. However, the small newcomer population size of the disadvantaged communities poses a discrepancy between the model and the results. We provide an interpretation based on the residential segregation in the city of Nagoya.