...I'm sure this could have been squeezed into the misogyny discussion, but we need more threads on here anyway

Teachers and tutors of Japanese in America are almost ALWAYS women, I'm sure a lot of you have noticed. Just Google the Japanese department of practically any university and you'll find that the entire staff is female (sometimes it'll be one guy and ten women, but usually it's pure female). In MA programs for teaching Japanese as a second language, nearly all the grad students are female as well.

The question is: WHY

In Japan men hold a stronger grip over the education system, despite the increasing number of female teachers. Why then is it that only Japanese women deem it suitable to become teachers of their native language when they move abroad? How did females come to monopolize the teach-Japanese-to-foreigners market?

Why, why, why, why, why.

You say 'deem it suitable', I say 'choose to do it for money.'

Because they married an unappealing white man for citizenship, wanted to ditch him, found they had no marketable skills other than Japanese once they moved abroad, and decided to teach their native language as the only option left?

OR

Because Japanese women are more driven to escape the patriarchal oppression of Japan and/or naturally more inclined to explore and utilize their inherent empathy to teach Japanese, which is a language-virus they have empathetically learned to co-exist with, their mutual mission now to infect as many humans as possible?

I'll try to think of some more later.

To be honest, when I started taking Japanese, I didn't care about the gender of my instructor, because as a good American, I'm supposed to be blind to issues like gender (and race, handicap, age, etc.) when it comes to things like that.

I only became conscious of it when it was pointed out that there are two "flavors" of Japanese-- boy talk and girl talk, and that if you learned from too many women, you'd start to sound like a girl. (God, that sounds so 7th grade.)

So maybe it maybe explains why the majority of us sound like women when we learn Japanese.

Anyway, looking back on it, when I was taking Japanese in grad school (because I had extra grant money and I could), there were 4 women on faculty, and one guy. Same goes for the grad students who were teaching. Just one guy out of all the women.

At the current place where I study for the JLPT in NC, all of the tutors are women. No Y chromosomes to be found.

Does that make the Japanese man teaching Japanese to us non-Japanese abroad a protected species?

7 years later, and the one guy in grad school isn't teaching anymore, he's in a company in Japan. So they're possibly even rarer than that.

A smart person could really capitalize on this-- rehabilitating feminine-sounding foreign men into sounding properly manly.

All the Japanese teachers at my university were female too, except for one male who left for a fellowship at another university I think.

I don't know why. A bigger question I'd rather ask is why aren't students allowed to date teachers

why why why why

For what it's worth, this is the case at my university: We have six Japanese women that teach Japanese language courses and one white man. There is a Japanese and a Chinese (department head) man who teach higher level reading and discussion classes, but that only accounts for one or two class sections a term. The men mostly hold Ph.D. degrees while the women just have M.A.'s. Most of the degrees are in English or Applied Linguistics, so to me it is not an afterthought for any of them. However, I believe the people only holding M.A.'s are signed as "Lecturer" while the Ph.D. holders are varying levels of "Professor." A few of the women appear to be married to white or Hispanic men based on their surnames, but others are married to Japanese men or not married at all.

So the case Aijin described is definitely apparent here, but looking at my department alone, the men seem to still hold that grip over the education system. They mostly hold the tenured (or tenure-track) positions and make larger decisions within the department (particularly the courses offered each term). We have Japanese men teaching in other departments, but they are mostly math and science related (and again more likely to be professor/asst. professor rather than lecturer). However, these women work so hard to be good instructors of the language for us, and even though they hold lower positions, I don't think any of them settled for this job.

Out of curiosity, do women also tend to teach English at Japanese universities, or is the trend not so clear-cut there?

nest0r Wrote:Because they married an unappealing white man for citizenship, wanted to ditch him, found they had no marketable skills other than Japanese once they moved abroad, and decided to teach their native language as the only option left?

I'll admit that many teachers do in fact do this, but I think that's mostly in regards to community college/high school level in my experience. At universities usually the professors have marketable skills and degrees, yet still choose to pursue teaching Japanese to foreigners.

And I don't think that's really even an easy way out, as most of the teachers have to devote their lives to teaching despite being able to find other careers.

Quote:Because Japanese women are more driven to escape the patriarchal oppression of Japan and/or naturally more inclined to explore and utilize their inherent empathy to teach Japanese, which is a language-virus they have empathetically learned to co-exist with, their mutual mission now to infect as many humans as possible?

I'll try to think of some more later.

Sounds like the plot for a sci-fi horror novel

Ralliart Wrote:Out of curiosity, do women also tend to teach English at Japanese universities, or is the trend not so clear-cut there?

It's not nearly as clear-cut. My personal experience has been mostly male teachers for English in Japan.
I wonder what the statistics for ALT jobs are as well, as from my knowledge it seems mostly to be dominated by males too.

liosama Wrote:I don't know why. A bigger question I'd rather ask is why aren't students allowed to date teachers

why why why why

Just wait until you're no longer their student
It is kinda' weird since I don't think there's a policy against the husbands/family of teachers enrolling in their classes. At least I've had teachers whose husbands take their classes (usually they have young kids and the wife wants the husband to be better at Japanese since the wife will be speaking to the kid in Japanese etc.)

Yep, this has pretty much been the case at my university since I got here. In the Japanese department, the 3 (Japanese-raised) professors are all female. The TAs are all mainly female as well. We had 2 males, and I don't know how long they were there, but after I enrolled were gone within a year or 2.
But the female TAs...Most of them are first-year (?) grad students in Japanese or Linguistics or something like that...There's usually a good number of them every year.

As for dating students...It's been known to happen in the past. I never knew said TA, but apparently everybody knew about it, but just kept their mouths closed around certain authoritative figures.

liosama Wrote:All the Japanese teachers at my university were female too, except for one male who left for a fellowship at another university I think.

I don't know why. A bigger question I'd rather ask is why aren't students allowed to date teachers

why why why why

If it's any consolation, we are allowed to date the tutors at my university. They are just undergraduates that are native speakers of the language. However I think they're mostly freshmen and sophomores, so if you're looking for someone a bit older, then you're out of luck

Not to stray too far from the topic, but while most of our tutors are female as well, it seems we have very few people who actually want to tutor for an extra unit or two. The Chinese department has like two tutors every hour while we get one tutor every other hour... but just like office hours, tutoring hours hardly get used, so moot point I suppose :/

Yep, at my old uni we had two Japanese teachers teaching beginner and intermidiate level course, and both were female.

Why? Well, one was a Masters student, and one was doing a PhD. I think they were both doing it simply as an easy way to earn extra money. Any senior Japanese researcher in a UK university is going to be in a quite important position, and therefore not willing or able to teach their language. What about male Japanese Masters and PhD students? To be honest most of the ones I met were studying science subjects and seemed quite stereotypically Japanese i.e. shy / quiet; not ideal teacher material.

Maybe that's what it comes down to? People coming from art, social sciences, english, lingusitic backgrounds are more willing to be teachers, and those subjects happen to be dominated by females at university research level.

Japanese Private tutors in London seem in general to be female too, but that's usually because they simply get alot more work (many females want tutors of the same sex, and guys who are learning Japanese generally usually like asian chicks).

I have no answers, but I can confirm the trend. At my old university, the program was headed by one male professor, who did a lecture section. Every 'lab' session (you know, regular language class part) was taught by a woman. There were probably at least... six? Give or take, I'm kind of forgetting. Like Asriel's situation, they were mostly grad students.

We had some more men in auxiliary positions, such as my Japanese Literature professor, who was male (and Caucasian, actually).

Although, for a brief period, there was one fantastic male lab teacher we had who was a linguist by trade. Really an amazing teacher, got way more out of the two quarters I took with him than most of the others which were much more rote. Although, should be said, he was also Caucasian. It was a pleasant change to get to hear masculine inflected Japanese in class though. After four years of being taught by women some of that stuff can be difficult to un-train.

So, tl;dr, yes I've never had a male Japanese (from japan) language teacher, nor am I aware of any more than one that existed in my entire department.

Interesting thread idea...
All the Japanese teachers I've met have been female as well.
Now what I'd really like to know is why are Japanese class curriculums (that I've seen) so outdated in terms of gender?
When I took classes, the textbook said only men could use かな and women could only use かしら, and the teacher enforced this, despite using かな herself. ^-^;
僕少女-speech doesn't seem to go over well either (even when used with classmates).

I think women tend to dominate the foreign language department in general, not just with Japanese. I was a French major in college and had studied French since the 7th grade and have never had a male teacher. There were no male French teachers on the faculty at my university either and I saw very few male teachers in the entire Department of Foreign Languages office.

Aijin, I'm surprised you say that you had many male teachers of English at university in Japan because in my experience (which is quite limited I will admit) most of the teachers are female.

Men dominate the eikaiwa school industry here, but I think we all know that the vast majority of eikaiwa teachers, both male and female, are not doing the job because they like it but because they want to stay in Japan.

I personally prefer women teachers and tutors for the same reason they put women's voices in navigation systems and fighter planes...

I think it's been proven that we pay attention more to a women's voice. Not sure if that applies to girls too. Not sure it really applies to paying attention to wives voices though
Those are sometimes tuned out

socrat Wrote:I personally prefer women teachers and tutors for the same reason they put women's voices in navigation systems and fighter planes...

I think it's been proven that we pay attention more to a women's voice. Not sure if that applies to girls too. Not sure it really applies to paying attention to wives voices though
Those are sometimes tuned out

Arrr, what kind o' landlubbin' assumption is that, matey? There be swashbucklinly good male teachers an' speakers throughout the seven seas, arr! Personal preferences don't be explainin' this monopoly o' females in Japanese departments specifically.

thistime Wrote:I think women tend to dominate the foreign language pirate ships in general, not just with Japanese. I was a French major in college and had studied French since the 7th grade and have never had a male teacher. There were no male French teachers on the faculty at my university either and I saw very few male teachers in the entire Department of Foreign Languages office.

Ay, there be many wenches in language departments, but th' gender stratification ain't nearly as dominant as in Japanese pirate ships.

Quote:Aijin, I'm surprised you say that you had many male teachers of English at university in Japan because in my experience (which is quite limited I will admit) most of the teachers are female.

The older swashbucklers have all been male, but the younger scallywags were female. I be thinkin' there is a generational correlation for gender, arr!

Is it talk like a pirate day today??

edit: yep! http://www.talklikeapirate.com/

Funny, not noticed people along on facebook this year - was hilarious in 2009..

I think it's because Japanese women want to escape Japan and meet foreign men.

Japanese men have no reason to leave Japan unless they are transferred by their company.

When the women get here, they have 2 options: work at a restaurant or teach their native language.

chamcham Wrote:I think it's because Japanese women want to escape Japan and meet foreign men.

Japanese men have no reason to leave Japan unless they are transferred by their company.

When the women get here, they have 2 options: work at a restaurant or teach their native language.

This. It shows how much Japanese education system fails at actually preparing their youth for normal work. I blame it all on their language programs, without English (it should be the average Japanese citizen second language) you just can't expect to work in your normal field of expertise thus leaving you the option of either teaching your native tongue or some dead end job...

Aijin Wrote:Ay, there be many wenches in language departments, but th' gender stratification ain't nearly as dominant as in Japanese pirate ships.

Actually, it's pretty much the same for French as well. I've never seen a male French teacher... ever.

Teaching one's own language is not a particularly masculine field at all. Without solid figures we are only going based on personal experience, so...

I think you're asking the wrong question. A better question would be, "why is that Japanese males (or males in general) do not teach their own language?"

With the answer most likely being that learning a foreign language (and then teaching your own) is not a particularly masculine role. For this reason, like with music, there is a large population of homosexual males within the field as compared to the rest of society, and many male polyglots are often assumed to be homosexual.

Edit: It wouldn't be too surprising to more females in art, dance or music related fields as well.

I've asked this same question to a number of different universities. As it turns out the answer is pretty simple: women speak clearer than men do. Therefore it's easier for students to pick up a language from a women as they will understand it better.

How many Japanese dramas/anime have you seen where you couldn't understand a female because of the way she spoke? Now how about a male? I can think of at least 5 examples in 2 seconds of instances where I had NO idea what the male was saying at all. I even questioned whether it was Japanese or not.

Learning the most polite way to speak first is perhaps most important when learning Japanese.
A man speaking overly polite might seem a little unnatural.

But wouldn't that mean male students are learning to speak unnaturally from their polite female teachers? ;-)

While I agree that some men can be hard to understand sometimes (the old ones, regional ones, young slangy ones, drunk ones), teachers use standard Japanese in class so sex shouldn't matter. Besides, when students are able to handle dialogue, they'll be exposed to many different styles. Being able to distinguish the differences is part of it.

I don't see any justification for it. It's more likely just a holdover of gender roles - similar to the reason there are fewer women in science and fewer male nurses. The one that makes me laugh is male-only chefs and servers at fancy restaurants. Cooking is women's work, unless you're an expert? lol

Yeah, I don't see that being an issue, as the male teachers I've seen do speak clearly as possible so that their students can understand them. Both female and male teachers are limited to the material their teaching the class, which for beginner-intermediate is just standard Japanese. If you're going out drinking with your teachers that's one thing, but in the class-setting it should be equal.

Thora: I've always found that terribly ironic too, how cooking is considered feminine and unmanly, yet nearly every chef of Michelin-starred restaurants is a man. A generic roast-beef is girly, but preparing foie gras is masculine apparently?

Aijin Wrote:A generic roast-beef is girly, but preparing foie gras is masculine apparently?

Someone has to show the lesser sex how to do it properly .

Quote:to the material their teaching the class,

Okay, now I think you're doing this on purpose - in an attempt to appear native.

Ryuujin27 Wrote:I've asked this same question to a number of different universities.

Who are you asking in these universities? I've never heard anyone say that men aren't hired because they don't speak clearly. I don't even think it's necessarily the case that schools intentionally hire more women; it may just be that more women apply.

Quote:Learning the most polite way to speak first is perhaps most important when learning Japanese.
A man speaking overly polite might seem a little unnatural.

Male students should not be forced to learn a style of Japanese that sounds unnatural for a native male Japanese (and I don't think they are, in my experience). So that shouldn't really matter that much.