| Public policy making is a process of establishing policy goals,making policy plans and finally determining public policy alternatives through feasibility analysis by public organizations,especially government organs in accordance with scientific procedures and specified principles based on full understanding of public affairs.Civic participation in public policy making is one of the major dimensions of democratic system.With development of times,women’s participation in this process has been one important form for the fulfillment of citizens’ political rights.It reflects directly not only women’s effect and status in the society but also the development of socialist political civilization.From the perspective of gender equality,women shall fully enjoy democratic rights as men and shall participate in public policy making more extensively.The core of women’s participation in public affairs management is their direct participation in public policy making.There is no denying that women’s participation in public policy making in many countries is not so satisfying.Expanding women’s participation in public policy making has been a critical issue faced by all countries in the world.More and more countries have realized that expanding size of women’s participation in public policy making and raising the participation efficiency is an important indicator of elevating women’s social status and also a way to improve the degree of democratization of public policies.The feminine characteristics decide that women’s participation is irreplaceable in some aspects and is one of the footstones for public policy making.Size expansion and efficiency improvement of women’s participation in public policy making may facilitate the scientificness,democratization and legalization of public policy making.Many fruitful results have been obtained in the study of women’s political participation,but most of the studies focus on the politics as an entire process rather than on the policy making as a part in the entire process.As with the policy making process,women’s participation in this process also has some particularities.If these particularities are neglected,it’s impossible to say that the study of women’s political participation is complete.Further,policy making process relates with public affairs management more closely than common political processes and is the most direct carrier of women’s political expression in social public affairs.Insufficient attention to this issue in study will directly influence women’s direct participation in public affairs management in practice.To truly realize the equality between men and women,the most important is the equal participation in public rights platform between men and women citizens,while the core of equal participation in public rights platform is the participation in policy making.Therefore,to study the issue of equality between men and women,the most important is to study women’s participation in policy making.Consequences of women’s participation show that "when women are provided with the same conditions as men to participate in politics,women’s ability is not lower than men’s in the judgment of public affairs,choice of public policies and understanding and acceptation of public interest preferences and women’s potential in participation in public decision making is comparable to men"①.Thus,it’s anticipated that with social progress and economic development,women’s participation in public policy making process will be an irresistible trend.As women’s participation in policy making expands in scope,it’s imperative to study how to better improve women’s participation in policy making process.In Goodnow’s opinion,politics is the embodiment of state will and administration is the implementation of state will.Public policy embodies the state will,but more,it is one kind of outside manifestation form of the government.Such form of manifestation is also an important part of administrative process and is generated from the combination of various factors including society,politics,economy,humanity etc.In a broad sense,women’s political participation includes policy participation,that is,policy participation is part of political participation;but in a narrow sense,women’s political participation usually refers to the common women citizens’ participation in public political life in certain ways,while women’s policy participation normally means that women citizens take initiative to enter the field of public decision making at various levels in different forms so as to have direct influence on public policy activities through various ways.So political participation is more macroscopic and policy participation is often more microscopic.The former can reflect women’s overall interests more clearly at macro level while the latter reflects women’s concrete interests at decision level more directly.Women’s policy participation may increase the advantageous conditions and improve the possibility of appeals realization in the process of policy game and process of fighting for rights and interests,and largely avoid such phenomenon that women’s policy appeals are ignored or excluded from public policy process.Although policy participation has the same goal with political participation,i.e.maintaining women’s rights and interests and raising women’s political status and decision-making ability,the former has a higher value of tool,may further deepen women’s political participation and is one concrete form of political participation.Since most of previous studies lay emphasis on political participation,which causes that some targeted policy processes can’t be highlighted or even be ignored,such phenomenon finally affects women’s role in social and political life and the elevation of women’s political status and decision-making ability.Presently,more and more women citizens have been aware that they can express opinions in policy making process and the advanced information technology creates more channels for women to participate in policy making,all of these make it easier and convenient for women to participate in policy making.Women’s policy participation plays an irreplaceable role in effectively avoiding the marginalization of women’s group interests.Just on such background,this paper puts focus on women’s policy participation.Japan is our close neighbor separated only by a narrow strip of water.Both countries have several thousand years of civilization history.The intercourse between the two countries can be at least traced back to two thousand years ago.The famous storey of Xufu’s East Journey is said to happen just in Qin Dynasty two thousand years ago.Although the truth of this storey is impossible to be proved,but it sufficiently indicates that the mutual influence of the civilization development of the two countries started very early.The event of Jianzhen East Journey happened in Tang Dynasty one thousand years ago.The great contribution made by the monk named Jianzhen has become a famous story in the history of Sino-Japan cultural communications.In recent years,China and Japan both have summed up rich experience and lessons from the history of civilization development,including the development history of women’s participation in policy making.Japan is the first country that realized modernization in Asia and China is a developing country that is going toward modernization.Modernization process will bring realistic and profound influence on women’s participation in policy making.In spite of the different paths of political modernization,the effect of modernization on citizens’ participation in policy making is essentially the same.Therefore,the study of women’s participation in policy making in Japan and its comparison with that in China can provide references for China’s political modernization.It’s useful at any time for a developing country to properly draw experience and lessons from other countries.There must be diversity but also similarity between the political systems of any two countries,thus there must be comparability between them.It’s also the case with women’s participation in policy making in the category of political democratization.A nation or country must be in one stage of political democratization process.In public policy comparison and analysis,it’s a lasting research topic to compare the current status,trend and causes of the process of democratization of different nations or countries including women’s participation in policy making,discover the underlying modes of theory and learn experience from other countries,and it’s a correct attitude a developing country shall have to accelerate modernization.Chinese nation created splendid ancient civilization in its history but its modern history was full of humiliation and declines.It struggled hardly in semi-feudal and semi-colonial abyss under the ravage from western powers,rose up to resist and finally ushered in the birth of New China.In modern times,the fate of Chinese women was also full of humiliation and resistance just like the fate of our motherland and received real liberation with the birth of New China,which opened the new era for their participation in policy making.As a later-developed capitalist country,Japan inflicted untold sufferings to Chinese people.This country also endured pressures from Western aggression,but such pressure was defused through various reform measures and modernization was successfully realized.Later,the results of modernization became the backing of militarism and made the country go onto the road of foreign aggression and expansion,and the Asian women including Japanese women were victims under its aggression and expansion.The ancient Japan is an uncivilized and backward country.Chinese culture brought important influence to the start of civilization of Japan since Japan got rid of obscuration and backwardness through the enlightenment of Chinese culture.When facing with the risk of being colonized by Western powers,Japan got out of the crisis through political reform while China achieved national liberation and independence through resistance and fighting of the whole nation.Women’s participation in policy making is inevitably influenced by national development,so the different paths of China and Japan decide that there must be significant differences between women’s policy participation between the two countries,which constitutes one of the premises for the comparison between Japan and China.Without deep understanding of the humiliation and brilliances of Chinese women in process of national development and the difficulties and experience women in other countries have gone through in the road of policy participation,it’s impossible to realize how to make Chinese women stand proudly among world women more rapidly and to enhance our confidence on theory and system.Although the comparison with women’s participation in public policy making in Japan can bring reference to China,what is of the most significance is to enhance our national confidence and the confidence in theory and system.With Marxism as theoretical guidance and Chinese and Japanese women as research object,this paper compares and analyzes the administrative ecology,social environment,participation awareness,way of participation,dominant pattern and other core processes for women citizens’ policy participation in China and Japan by using social gender analysis,system analysis,quantitative analysis and other research tools to find out the different underlying rules behind women’s participation in policy making in China and Japan,and draw the successful experience of Japan while developing the unique advantages of our country to expand women’s participation.According to the systematic and scientific principle of integrity,the world is integrated by relations rather than real objects.This principle requires that the understanding of the world shall start from nonlinear effect rather than only pursuing for linear results.Meanwhile,the perspective of whole shall be adopted to master the research object from the whole rather than the part by examining the mutual relations and interaction between the parts,the whole and the part and the system and environment.In this study,it means that the understanding of women’s policy participation in China and Japan shall not be limited to analysis of political factors but shall be expanded to analysis of multi factors including economic and social factors;not limited to functional analysis but deepened to structural analysis;not limited to description of appearances but traced back to the exploration of model building;not limited to study of women’s behaviors but extended to the study of the administrative and social environment where they are.Only in such way,can the research object and the effect of environment on the object be understood more comprehensively.Based on this,research framework in this paper is composed of the introduction and four modules.The part of Introduction analyzes the theoretical basis and realistic background of women’s participation in public policy making,explores the theoretical and realistic significance from the study of women’s participation in public policy making in China and Japan and then summarizes the previous studies to find out the blind area on this topic.Based on the review of related literatures,this paper explicitly points out that there are not many studies on women citizens’ policy participation and the comparative analysis between China and Japan is rarer in China or Japan.Since there are few literatures for reference,it’s inevitable that this study will encounter many highly difficult "obstacles",but on the other hand,it provides clear focus for this study and offers space for the intent of innovation.The first module mainly compares the social ecology for women’s participation in policy making in China and Japan and analyzes the historical factor,social factor,traditional culture,economic environment and other factors that influence women’s participation in politics and policy making in China and Japan.This comparison is based on such fact that the citizens’ policy participation in a country is closely related with its social ecology and comparison of social ecology helps to find out the essential difference on women’s participation in policy making between China and Japan and various causes in social aspects.The investigation of the development history of women’s participation in politics and policy making in China and Japan makes us more clearly know about the ups and downs of Chinese and Japanese women in political society and more clearly understand the current status and historical limitations of women’s participation in policy making in China and Japan so as to propose more targeted policy thinking.The code of conduct of a family is one social function derived under special living background and it has the effect of adjusting mutual relations between family members.Such social function of a family,with the appearance of specific lifestyle and relational network,covers the essence of enslaving women and depriving them of the right to participate in politics and decision making.The study of the effect of social ecology on women’s policy participation can’t be completed without the study of the effect of family relations.The aging and low-birth-rate society of Japan and the aging society of China both have negative effects on women’s participation in public policy making,mainly through the combination of multiple factors such as traditional social division of labor,traditional social morality and the need of women’s housework.As for the influence on women’s participation in politics and decision making,no matter the family system in Japan or the patriarchal system in China,both of them have the same essence,that is,having the same purpose to oppress women and deprive them of the right to participate in public affairs.Women’s participation is subjective political culture in Japan and is highly participatory political culture in China.The second module mainly focuses on the comparison of administrative ecology for women’s participation in policy making in China and Japan.Administrative ecology is a knowledge that analyzes administrative phenomenon from perspective of the interaction between administrative system and environment.As for this point,this paper mainly analyzes the influence on women’s participation in policy making of those factors including administrative operation,government coordination mechanism,policy review,party politics,civil society,local autonomy and legal environment,with the aim to know the relationship between women’s participation in policy making and the administrative environment in China and Japan,identify the advantageous and disadvantageous conditions in administrative ecology for women’s policy participation,and improve our understanding to the process of women’s participation in policy making under certain administrative ecology.The status of women in policy participation in Japan was established during administrative operation,while in China,it was established under the lead of Chinese Communist Party through the government’s full implementation of the "women liberation and participation"policy issued by CCP.Presently,the government structure of our country stresses the longitudinal division of decision power but ignores its horizontal functional integration.This habit tends to cause women participation to be neglected.The coordination mechanism inside Chinese government still can’t completely accommodate to the promotion of women’s policy participation.In china,intellectual women often raise critical opinions on public policies through the platforms of public institutions,while it’s rare for intellectual women in Japan to express such opinions through the platforms of independent administrative institutions.Size of women’s policy participation in decision-making consulting agency is lower than that of men both in China and Japan,because it is influenced by various restrictions and it’s a problem for both countries how to expand women’s participation in decision-making consulting agency.Since civil society went through jumping development both in China and Japan,although it is maturing gradually,the interest of women in participating in policy making hasn’t been increasing on the wholeIn the third module,a comparison of main characteristics of women’s participation in policy making in China and Japan is carried out.In addition to the effect of environment on women’s policy participation,main characteristics of the subjects in participation process also deserve attention.Only by combining main characteristics of participation process and of participation environment,can we comprehensively understand the difference between women’s participation in policy making in China and Japan.In this paper,main characteristics of women’s participation in policy making in China and Japan include participation awareness,category,form and dominant pattern etc.The frustration of Japanese women’s civic awareness in participating in policy making has delivered the frustration feeling to the next generation of women’s participation in policy making.It’s more difficult to establish and consolidate modern women’s civic awareness in China than men’s.On aspect of the closeness with public value,the women citizens in China have lower sense of responsibility than men citizens.The conservativeness in Japanese women’s awareness of civil rights at present stage will inevitably bring some influence on their participation in public policy making.During participation in policy making,the legal awareness,awareness of rights and participation awareness are unmatched with the participation mode in disputes between political parties due to the influence of authoritarianism.Japanese women have changed from inadaptation to participation in policy making for the reason of cultural quality to the starting of gradual adaptation process.However,in China,the change of women’s attention on public policy making process indicates that the improvement of education level elevates women’s awareness of policy participation.The improvement of women’s awareness of policy participation is not a problem that can be solved just by ceasing at the stage of encouraging and advocating or limited to political field;on the contrast,it needs to really improve women’s social participation through many ways,such as expanding employment.To maintain imposed democracy for long,through renovation of administrative culture and traditional administrative system is necessary.In the fourth module,the way to improve the effectiveness of Chinese women’s participation in policy making is discussed from the international point of view.In socialist political civilization construction,the role of women is still behind the men,which is mainly due to the imperfection of system environment for women’s participation in policy making.How to perfect system environment and consolidate organizational foundation is a major consideration in future.The improvement of women’s participation system in public policy making is the embodiment of political system’s civilization and also the problem to be solved in priority.The establishment of women’s civic awareness shall be enhanced to guide the formation of civic awareness from various levels so that women citizens can have correct awareness of rights and awareness of master and actively participate in policy making process.Improvement of civic capacity must depend on education and women’s self-learning and improvement,which is the inevitable course for the improvement of women’s capability of participating in policy making.As part of civic capability,moral capability makes women be more sensitive to and have more incisive understanding to social issues.Nowadays,with highly advanced internet technology,policy participation with the aid of social organization is an important method to improve the organization of participation process.Internet can break the time and space limit of social organization mode and make it expandable infinitely to enlarge the space for women’s participation in policy making.The women contact network inside the civic society facilitates the common value orientation among women.Attention shall be paid to women during revision of policies and laws,e.g.firstly realizing equality between men and women in some concrete policies,such as retirement age,remuneration standard etc.,to provide the most basic system support for women’s policy participation. |
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