51吃瓜网

A group of volunteers has created to offer free consultations on how to deal with harassment for women running in April’s local elections.

The group, made up of researchers and female politicians, will offer consultations online through April 30, a week after the local elections wrap up.

Mari Hamada, head of Stand by Women, a group that offers advice to female political candidates on how to avoid online harassment, said women running for local office, who often lack the support and experience to help them counter harassment, are in a particular bind.

“I think female candidates need as many safety nets as they can get, so they won’t be cornered into taking everything on by themselves,” Hamada told a news conference in Tokyo on Monday, adding that the service will mostly take the form of “peer support” from other women. “Counseling was the No. 1 service that women I talked to said they needed.”

Japan lags far behind other developed countries when it comes to female participation in politics, with women making up less than 15% of lawmakers at both the local and national levels. In the most recent gender gap index report released by the World Economic Forum, in July 2022, Japan ranked 116th overall and 139th in political empowerment out of the 146 countries surveyed.

Tomomi Higashi, a member of the Machida Municipal Assembly in western Tokyo, recounted her experience of being harassed physically and psychologically while campaigning for the first time in 2018. As she was canvassing on the streets, some male voters would fondle her hands while shaking them, or touch her underarms. Male “volunteers” would stalk her and demand that she disclose all her schedules, she said.

“There are men who take advantage of the candidates’ need to appeal to all voters,” she said, noting that, unlike in the business world, where employers are legally obliged to stand up to harassment against employees, politicians or political candidates have little protection, legally or otherwise. “There’s this culture that politicians should put up with anything.”

Mari Miura, a political science professor at Sophia University who serves as an adviser to the group, said Japan and Chile are the only OECD countries that have no comprehensive laws banning harassment.

While over 20 local governments, including Fukuoka Prefecture and the city of Komae in western Tokyo, have recently passed ordinances banning harassment by and against lawmakers and municipal officials, issues remain with their implementation, especially when the perpetrators are elected representatives, she said.