Agnes controversy

STANFORD, Calif.--Hong Kong-born pop star Agnes Chan brought her baby son to the workplace 25 years ago, igniting a national debate in Japan about work and child rearing, dubbed the “Agnes controversy.”

Chan, 58, who had long refrained from discussing the work-life controversy, has started to speak out about the issue. Asked why she decided to revisit it now, Chan said she was prompted by past regrets.
“It could have been different if I had fought it out at the time,” she said in a recent interview.
The environment surrounding Japan’s working mothers remains difficult. In the United States, Yahoo Inc. CEO Marissa Mayer has recently triggered an uproar over work and child care after she brought her baby to the workplace.

Chan was a speaker at the annual conference of the International Association of Feminist Economics held at Stanford University in mid-July.

“Many young Japanese women still think that having children will put an end to their careers,” she said. “Women should be free to choose what they do with their lives and be able to realize their full potential.”

The audience erupted into applause.

Chan decided to revisit her concerns about work and family after Mayer gave birth in autumn 2012 and built a nursery next to her office at her own expense so she could keep her baby close to her. The 38-year-old Yahoo CEO had, on the other hand, banned employees from working at home as part of her company's business reconstruction efforts.

Mayer’s moves incited jealousy and generated a backlash from many working mothers across the country.

The two debates across the Pacific cannot be easily compared, as Mayer’s case involves wage discrepancies and management decisions in an organization.

But Myra Strober, a professor emeritus of education at Stanford University and adviser to Chan when she was a doctoral student there, said she felt the controversy would not have been as heated if the protagonists had been men.

She invited Chan to be a speaker at the feminist economics conference.

In 1987, when Chan was a celebrity with nearly 10 TV gigs at the time, she gave birth to a baby boy, but returned to work three months later.

Determined to raise him by herself as much as possible, Chan brought him to a TV station where she worked and breast-fed him in a backstage room during her spare time. Critics blasted her for “devaluing” her work or being “dependent on her husband.”

Recalling what she felt those days, Chan said, “Many companies did not allow women to do something similar as I did. If you say something, you’ll be criticized.”

Upon request, she testified at a 1988 Diet hearing on women, work and child rearing. “I fled from the debate over the issue,” she said.

Chan touched upon the controversy at the international gathering at Stanford: “Mothers accused me of abusing my child. Working women screamed ‘Unfair.’ ”

It was the first time she had talked about the problem in public since the debate had died down.
According to the Families and Work Institute, a nonprofit organization in the United States, only 7 percent of U.S. corporations and organizations had child-rearing facilities within the office or close by in 2012, the same rate as in 2005.

In Japan, where the maternity and child-rearing leave system has been set, “maternity harassment” cases are on the rise, aimed at stopping women from continuing to work while raising their children.
According to the labor ministry, 43.9 percent of women who gave birth to their first child between 2005 and 2009 left their job, an increase by 6.5 percentage points from 20 years ago.

“It is not too late,” Chan said. “I want to tell my experience to younger generations to improve the situation for working women.”

She is planning to form a network for men and women to discuss work and family. She also plans to convey her message through TV programs and via the Internet.

Among the audience members at Stanford was Kazuhei Kaneko, 26, her oldest son, the baby that triggered the uproar in 1987.

“Did I feel lonely in my childhood? No, I didn’t,” said Kaneko, who finances venture business startups in Silicon Valley.

“What if I marry a woman like my mother? Well, I don’t mind becoming a 'house husband.' ”

Source:http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201310290006