Women's Poverty

“Women’s Poverty” (Japanese: 女性たちの貧困, “The Shock of a New Chain”) is a work by NHK’s “Women’s Poverty” reporting team, compiled from a documentary of the same name broadcast in 2014. Through in-depth interviews with numerous impoverished Japanese women, this work reveals another reality beneath Japan’s seemingly prosperous surface.

Japan has long been seen as a representative of developed, affluent societies. But “Women’s Poverty” reveals a shocking fact: in this seemingly wealthy society, a large number of women live below the poverty line, and their plight is almost completely invisible.

The women interviewed in the book come from various backgrounds: single mothers, young women in non-regular employment, middle-aged women unable to work due to caring for family members, elderly women receiving minimum pensions. What they have in common: all struggling in silence, all “unseen” by society.

The most valuable aspect of “Women’s Poverty” is its refusal to blame poverty on individuals. Instead, it systematically analyzes the structural factors causing women’s poverty:

Non-regular Employment: More than half of Japanese women work in non-regular jobs (dispatch workers, part-time, temporary). These jobs have low income, lack security, and are easily terminated. Women’s concentration in non-regular employment is closely related to social expectations that they bear housework and childcare responsibilities.

Single-parent Family Difficulties: The vast majority of single-parent families in Japan are single-mother families. Due to insufficient social support, these mothers must simultaneously bear the dual responsibilities of earning money and caring for children, often falling into a vicious cycle of “the more you work, the poorer you become.”

Social Security Gaps: Japan’s social security system was designed with the “standard family” (male working full-time, female as full-time housewife) as its premise. Women who don’t fit this model—unmarried women, divorced women, women in non-regular employment—often cannot obtain adequate security.

Intergenerational Transmission: Poverty is transmitted across generations. Many poor women themselves came from poor families, lacking educational opportunities and social capital from childhood. Their children—especially daughters—may repeat the same fate.

The book pays special attention to one group: young women living in internet cafés or manga cafés. In Japan, these 24-hour establishments have become “temporary residences” for the homeless, with an increasing proportion of young women.

Most of these women end up in internet cafés because they cannot afford rent, working low-wage non-regular jobs during the day and spending nights in cramped booths. Their situation reveals the harsh reality of “youth impoverishment” in Japan—even in developed countries, younger generations may face more difficult economic circumstances than their parents.

“Women’s Poverty” also focuses on the psychological state of impoverished women. Many interviewees said they had never mentioned their difficulties to anyone because “poverty is shameful.”

This silence makes the problem worse: they don’t seek help, don’t apply for relief, bear everything alone. Society’s stigmatization of poverty means that the poor must endure not only material deprivation but also psychological trauma.

“Women’s Poverty” was first broadcast as a television documentary, sparking widespread discussion in Japanese society. The subsequently published book further deepened this discussion, combining individual stories with social analysis.

This “making visible” has important political significance. As feminism has always emphasized: the first step is to make the problem seen. Only when society acknowledges the existence of women’s poverty and its structural causes can policy change be promoted.

For any reader wanting to understand invisible poverty in developed countries, the intersection of gender and class, and how social security systems affect women, “Women’s Poverty” is an important reference text.