Gender, Equality and Family Life

Professor Sumiko Iwao is Professor of Social Psychology at the Musashi Institute of Technology and Professor Emeritus at Keio University. Professor Iwao has worked in gender issues on the international stage and in Japan. Professor Iwao was the head of the Japanese delegation to Women 2000, the Special Session of the UN General Assembly, and currently serves on the Advisory Council on Assistance to Afghan Women. She is a founding member of the International Group for the Study of Women and served as its first chairperson. She has also been a member of the OECD higher experts group on women and structural change.

In Japan, Professor Iwao is a member of the Gender Equality Congress in the Cabinet Office and was formerly the chair of the Gender Equality Council in the Prime Minister’s Office. Professor Iwao has served as a member of the National Public Safety Commission overseeing the Police Agency and was chair of the Prime Minister’s Task Force on the Declining Birthrate.

Professor Iwao is also Visiting Professor at Harvard University and Visiting Fellow at King’s College, Cambridge University. She has been on the editorial board of Japan Echo magazine since 1984, serving as editor-in-chief since 1997. Her publications include ‘The Japanese Woman: Traditional Image and Changing Reality’ (Harvard University Press).

Professor Joy Hendry (chair) is Professor of Social Anthropology at Oxford Brookes University. Professor Hendry’s research concerns the social anthropology of Japan, and she has completed work on marriage, child-rearing, politeness behaviour and mathematics teaching in primary school. Her present research is on forms of cultural representation found in museums and theme parks which reconstruct foreign countries in Japan.