Tokyo-based Otsuma Women’s University President Masanao Ito. The university plans to establish a data science faculty in fiscal 2025. It is one of many universities expanding their science curriculums in a bid to survive as the chronically low birth rate cuts into the overall number of students.
© Yomiuri ShimbunVoices
in
Japan
quote of the day
The number of applicants for humanities and home economics is decreasing.
©2023 GPlusMedia Inc.
4 Comments
Login to comment
Mr Kipling
If you are applying to Otsuma women's university, you have already failed.
Bill Lewis
I'm all for expanding studies into science, but this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. I teach at a private high school that offers a home economics course that has seen amazing growth over the past few years, especially after the course was opened to male students. I would say about a quarter to a third of new students to the course are male. Perhaps Otsuma WOMEN'S University should stop the sexism and offer entry to anyone who wants to study there.
Mr Kipling
It's reason for being is to prepare well rounded middle-class housewives for middle managers.
GBR48
Most women's colleges/universities were founded to open up new opportunities to women, who were often excluded from existing universities or colleges. Pre-modern, gender segregation was often the norm, so there had to be a women's university or college for many women to get any graduate level education. They were generally not women-repressing wife factories.
Those that remain do so because they believe that their students benefit from the exclusion of men. Some will, some won't.
I was lucky that my comprehensive school offered both genders the opportunity to do needlework and home economics/'domestic science'. Our cookery classes were hugely popular with both boys and girls - a highlight of the week. We got to eat what we produced, which was as good as school got. Cookery is one of the fundamental life skills. A dependency upon processed foods and prepared meals (or even dining out) is the fast lane to a poor diet and obesity. And if I had the time and space, I'd buy a sewing machine.
Governments are targeting non-Science courses (the UK government plans to limit them). They want to push their citizens into science subjects or manual labour to replace migrant labour. It won't work particularly well. And they stand no more chance of a 50/50 gender balance in tech than in trainspotters. But it is good to offer greater access to courses. Female students don't always feel so comfortable when they are in a minority in a class, so having digital courses in a women's university is a good thing. Japan is not renowned for flexibility, modernisation or change, as most commenters note, so support it when it happens.