Incremento del incumplimiento de las obligaciones tributarias

Deeply interconnected to women’s employment issues is the matter of childcare. In order for mothers to be able to work, there was a need for nurseries and childcare facilities. Shiotani Sachiko, who has been involved in labour-related matters inside the women’s department of the BLL since the 1970s (Shiotani 2007, 77), took part in a campaign to ask the government to finance more childcare facilities. During the interview, she explained that

In the past, the local nursery would accept only children whose parents were working outside the house, but since most buraku mothers were working in the house the children were refused, so mothers had to work carrying their babies on the back. Because of that, many children at the age of two or three years old were still not able to walk properly and women were not able to look for other jobs.

According to Shiotani contributing to children’s education should be one of the roles of nurseries, especially since many parents from the buraku were illiterate and could not read to their children. Therefore, she went to the city office to ask for buraku children to be accepted at the nursery and to explain why it was important. She added: “while negotiating with the local authorities, I realized that the reason why they did not accept the children was not only buraku discrimination but also gender discrimination: they did not understand women’s problems and needs.” Having a place where mothers can safely leave their children is fundamental to give women the chance to find

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stable employment. One of the main features of buraku women’s life course is that their working life does not follow the typical M shape, which is a characteristic of Japanese women’s life course (Shiotani 2007, 77). Even after marriage and childbirth, they kept working to support the household since many men were not able to find stable employment that would allow them to realize the “male- breadwinner and female-housewife” ideal. Shiotani noticed how the need for buraku women to keep working boosted the creation of childcare centres, but at the same time, on the other way round, one consequence of the childcare movement was that women were able to keep working having small children, even when they did not have the financial need to do that (2006, 78).

Morita as well, in the Kochi prefecture, got involved in the fight to obtain more funds to build nurseries and childcare facilities. She started to get seriously interested in the matter after the death, in 1970, of her eldest son who left behind two little children (Morita 2012, 92). At the time, she even considered leaving the movement in order to properly take care of the children and of her son’s widow, however, she soon realized that there were many other single mothers going through the same struggles so she decided to keep fighting (2012, 114). In the 1970s, she also engaged in the struggle for the protection of the right to give birth. In fact, according to the article 22 of the Child Welfare Law, any pregnant women who cannot afford the fees should be placed in a maternity facility and should receive the necessary care. However, in the Law, there is a loophole because it stated that it was only valid if there were maternity facilities nearby1_{. Hence, the local BLL’s women’s} division asked the Kochi Prefecture and City to clarify which maternity facilities were available and to increase the number in order to cover a wider area. This campaign did not only benefit the buraku

1

Child Welfare Act 1947 Article 22 (1): In the case where an expectant and nursing mother in the area of responsibility of the Welfare Office

established by a prefectural government, a city and a town or village with a Welfare Office (hereinafter referred to as "Prefecture, etc.") is unable to receive in-hospital midwifery care due to economic reasons, regardless of the necessity in terms of healthcare, the prefecture, etc. shall, when the expectant and nursing mother applies, provide midwifery care to her in a midwifery home; provided, however, that this shall not apply when there is any unavoidable reason such as the non-existence of an adjacent midwifery home. http://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/law/detail_main?id=11&vm=2

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community but women in general, especially those in a difficult economic situation. Furthermore, to defend the right to childbirth Shiotani and her fellow activists fought to obtain childbirth subsidies to be included in the national health system (Shiotani 2007, 99). According to Shiotani, her biggest pride is that:

My community was the first in Osaka to create a nursery for sick children, in order to allow mothers to go to work. In fact, sick children were a big problem, especially for single mothers. The nursery is now managed by the NPO I founded in 2003, which also offer a service to help people in wheelchairs.

In the context of the Dowa childcare movement, the “sick children nursery” system was created quite early but did not spread in the mainstream society (Shiotani 2007, 87).

Along with children and single mothers, also elderly people are part of the most vulnerable part of society. Morita in the last period of her political life focused on elderly people’s care. For her last campaign for the city council, she appealed mainly to elderly people using simple language and tackling problems they were facing, such as community housing without elevators (Morita 2012, 177). One of the reasons she got involved in elderly care services was that not having any living son left she had nobody who would take care of her and many people around her were in the same situation. Hence, she decided to start a nursing care project for elderly people. At the beginning, however, only few buraku people moved into the facility. In fact, one issue was that old buraku ladies found it difficult to accept non-buraku “classy” people doing the cleaning and other tasks for them. They asked her to employ “their people” and thanks to the support of the city council she employed only helpers from the buraku community (2012, 186).

Getting involved in childcare, elderly care and other welfare-related initiatives is a distinct tendency in buraku women’s activism. It is possible to say that shared experiences such as poverty,

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motherhood, discrimination and illiteracy brought them to be more sensitive to the needs of the most vulnerable groups.

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Conclusions: Fighting Gender Discrimination Inside the Liberation