Legislator gives working women in Japan a strong voice and a face

Hardly had the 42-year-old lawmaker Yuka Ogata, carrying her seven-month-old son, sat down in the Kumamoto Municipal Assembly when four male members including Chairman Yoshotomo Sawada asked her why she had brought the baby into the chamber. Eventually, officials of the assembly on Kyushu Island in southern Japan booted her out, citing a rule that "visitors" are forbidden from the floor during a session.

Ogata said she had carried her son to the assembly on her first day back at work after giving birth in the hope of "visualizing the poignant voices of women struggling to balance between work and child-rearing".

Even though we continually raise our voices about the limits of what can be handled on a personal level and no matter how much we fight, as Ogata argued, nothing changes. "So I thought the only way they would listen was to bring my son to my assembly ... I wanted to give those struggling voices a face," she said. The male-dominated legislature in Japan is not friendly to woman lawmakers. And sexist taunts have been heard in Japan's parliament and local assemblies.