| Examining the activities of American women involved in the U.S. Occupation of post-WWII Japan, this dissertation focused on the programs and policies designed, implemented, and supported by key female Occupation personnel within SCAP's administrative bureaucracy. These women, as members of Government Section's "Constitutional Assembly," Civil Information and Education Section's Women's Information Branch, Economic and Scientific Section's Wages and Working Conditions Branch, Public Health and Welfare Section's Nursing Affairs Division, and the regional and prefectural Military Government Teams, worked to provide Japanese women with the same rights enjoyed by women in the United States as well as assisting them in obtaining rights American women had yet to achieve. In addition, this study further explores the incongruities between the idealized picture of life in the United States offered to Japanese women by many of these female Occupation officers and the existing reality of the various institutional and social obstacles impeding American women from achieving equality at home. |
