10 | MONDAY, JULY 29, 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
TOKYOThe main issue at stake in this
month’s election of the upper house of
Parliament was whether the ruling
coalition and its allies would win the
super majority they needed to amend
Japan’s pacifist Constitution. They
didn’t. Less noted was another failure of
the prime minister’s camp: The small
number of female candidates it
presented.
An old-guard male-dominant culture
continues to drive the ruling Liberal
Democratic Party (L.D.P.) and its part-
ners even as a new generation of female
politicians emerges.
Women won 28 of the 124 seats in
contest on July 21 (the upper house has
245 seats in all), matching the record set
three years ago. The total ratio of wom-
en in the chamber now reaches nearly
23 percent, a historic high — and close to
the world average for women’s repre-
sentation in parliamentary assemblies,
24.4 percent.
This is a commendable result, but it
belies huge differences between politi-
cal parties. The governing coalition led
by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is bring-
ing down the average.
Mr. Abe was lauded for appointing
five women to his cabinet in 2014; by
late 2018, there was only one left. He is a
cheerleader for “womenomics” and
argues that the empowerment of wom-
en will boost the economy. Yet his ruling
coalition is obstructing the advance-
ment of women in politics — and that not
only entrenches inequality; it also has
economic costs.
The ratio of women among candi-
dates in the race was a mere 14.6 per-cent for Mr. Abe’s L.D.P. and 8.3 percent
for its partner, Komeito. Among the four
main opposition parties, however, the
figure ranged from close to 36 percent
(for the Democratic Party for the Peo-
ple) to more than 71 percent (for the
Social Democratic Party). Those par-
ties, combined with independent candi-
dates supported by the opposition
(known collectively as “the unified
opposition”), achieved near-parity with
49.6 percent of female candidates, far
outperforming the ruling coalition,
which averaged just over 13 percent.
Women now
account for 17.
percent of the
L.D.P.’s members-
elect to the upper
house, compared
with, say, more
than 35 percent for
members-elect
from the Constitu-
tional Democratic
Party and 50 per-
cent for the unified opposition.
This was the first national election
since the enactment of the Gender
Parity Law, which promotes gender
equality in politics and urges “making
the numbers of male and female candi-
dates as even as possible.” (I helped
advise the nonpartisan parliamentary
group that prepared the bill.) It took
three years to enact, largely because of
resistance from the L.D.P. The only
reason the law eventually was passed
by Parliament, known as the Diet, and
unanimously, in 2018 is because it is
nonbinding.
Still, the idea of gender parity has
rapidly caught on among legislators.
This spring, I headed a research team of
six investigators that conducted a sur-
vey of Diet members in collaborationwith the newspaper Mainichi. (We
received 140 answers, a response rate of
approximately 20 percent.) We asked
respondents to say what they thought
an appropriate ratio of women in the
Diet would be. The mean of all their
answers was 43 percent — much higher
than the actual rates, namely 10 percent
of the lower house and 20 percent of the
(pre-election) upper house. Even
among L.D.P. respondents, the answer
was close to 38 percent.
We also asked respondents to choose
one of six possible explanations for why
there were so few female representa-
tives in Japan: the options included that
few women are interested in politics, the
difficulty of striking a work-life balance
and that voters consider men to be more
appropriate as politicians. Only 11 per-
cent of respondents from the L.D.P.
answered that it was because the par-
ties aren’t seriously committed to re-
cruiting women. But some 41 percent
said that women were underrepresent-
ed because they don’t consider politics
to be an attractive career choice.
That argument doesn’t hold. In Japan,
it is the political parties that nominate
candidates — there are no open prima-
ries, as in the United States — and the
selection process is opaque, not publicly
disclosed. The L.D.P. and other major
parties usually endorse incumbents.
In keeping with the Gender Parity
Law, which urges political parties to
take measures to increase the number
of female candidates, the Democratic
Party for the People and the Constitu-
tional Democratic Party set specific
targets: 30 percent and 40 percent,
respectively. Both parties surpassed
these goals ahead of the election — a
result that shows that these parties’
commitment to parity attracted female
candidates and disproves the claim thatit’s women’s choice to stay away from
politics.
The opposition parties’ proactive
efforts at inclusiveness are, in fact,
helping usher in a new generation of
female politicians. Many of these wom-
en promote policies drawing on their
personal experiences — for example, of
gender-based discrimination or har-
assment. Some have called for allowing
married women to keep their maiden
name, penalizing workplace har-
assment (which the law says should be
prevented but does not punish), further
criminalizing nonconsensual sex
crimes, prohibiting discrimination
against L.G.B.T.s — and reforming the
labor market to improve working condi-
tions for so-called nonregular workers.
During the recent election campaign,
Mr. Abe was the sole party leader to
oppose allowing separate family names.
(Japan is the only country in the world
requiring married couples to use the
same family name, and surveys suggest
that in 96 percent of cases, wives take
their husbands’ names.) Although the
current rule has costs — if only of chang-
ing legal documents — and these are
disproportionately borne by women,
Mr. Abe has said that the issue “has
nothing to do with economic growth.”
Yet this is but one of the many hurdles
that Japanese women face and that
undermine their full participation in the
country’s public and economic life.
Women are still too few and far be-
tween in Japanese politics, but a new
generation of them is rising, bringing
with them new concerns and new per-
spectives to policymaking. If wom-
enomics comes to Japan, it won’t be
thanks to Mr. Abe.Mari Miura
MARI MIURAis a professor of political
science at Sophia University in Tokyo.Empowering women in Japan, sort of
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan onstage during the World Assembly for Women in Tokyo in March.CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGESShinzo Abe
isn’t keen
on parity in
politics, despite
the economic
costs of gender
inequality.Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the Harvard
professor and four-term United States
senator from New York, famously ob-
served, “Everyone is entitled to his own
opinion, but not to his own facts.”
Today, everyone is entitled to his own
facts, or their own facts, since even
grammar has changed. The message
from the Trump White House, and from
Boris Johnson’s rise to prime minister in
Britain, is that facts don’t matter. The
bald-faced lie is perfectly acceptable, so
long as it keeps you at the center of what
passes today for attention. The impor-
tant thing is to feed the machine. Shock
is the best fodder. Social media dies
without outrage.
In the mid-1930s, a few years before
World War II, Robert Musil, the author
of “The Man Without Qualities” wrote,
“No culture can rest on a crooked rela-
tionship to truth.” The political culture of
both the United States and Britain is
sick. It is unserious, crooked and lethal.
There is no honest way to dissociate the
rise of Trump and Johnson from the
societies that produced them.The triumph of indecency is rampant.
Choose your facts. The only blow Trump
knows is the low one. As the gutter is to
the stars, so is this president to dignity.
Johnson does a grotesque Churchill
number. Nobody cares. The wolves have
it; the sheep, transfixed, shrug.
Indignation is finite. Power, the Ital-
ians say, wears out those who do not
have it. That’s Trump’s credo. I confess
to moments when anger refuses to be
summoned by the latest Trump outrage,
since, anyway, nobody can remember
Friday what was so unconscionable
Monday.
Still, I cannot forget Trump’s recent
treatment of Nadia Murad, a Yazidi
woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize
last year for her campaign to end mass
rape in war. The Islamic State, or ISIS,
forced Murad into sexual slavery when
it overran Yazidi villages in northern
Iraq in 2014. Murad lost her mother and
six brothers, slaughtered by ISIS.
She now lives in Germany, and has
been unable to return home, a point she
made in her July 17 White House meet-
ing with Trump. “We cannot go back if
we cannot protect our dignity, our fam-
ily,” she said.
Allow me to render the scene in the
present tense. Trump sits there at his
desk, an uncomprehending, unsympa-
thetic cardboard dummy. He looks
straight ahead for much of the time, not
at her, his chin jutting in his best effort at
a Mussolini pose. He cannot heave his
bulk from the chair for this brave young
woman. He cannot look at her.Every now and again, in a disdainful
manner, he swivels his head toward her
and other survivors of religious perse-
cution. When Murad says, “They killed
my mom, my six brothers,” Trump
responds: “Where are they now?”
Where are they now???
“They are in the mass graves in Sin-
jar,” Murad says. She is poised and
courageous throughout in her effort to
communicate her story in the face of
Trump’s complete, blank indifference.
Why this extraordinary attitude from
Trump? Well, at a guess, Murad is a
woman, and she is brown, and he is
incapable of empathy, and the Trump
administration
recently watered
down a United
Nations Security
Council resolution
on protecting vic-
tims of sexual
violence in conflict.
At the mention of
Sinjar, Trump’s
unbelievable response is, “I know the
area very well, you’re talking about. It’s
tough.”
Let’s play how-well-does-President-
Trump-know-Sinjar? It’s a wildly im-
plausible game.
Toward the end of the exchange,
Trump asks Murad about her Nobel
Prize. “That’s incredible,” he says.
“They gave it to you for what reason?”
“For what reason?” Murad asks,
suppressing with difficulty her incredu-
lity that nobody has briefed the presi-dent. Nobody can brief this president.
It’s pointless. He knows everything. “I
made it clear to everyone that ISIS
raped thousands of Yazidi women,” she
says.
“Oh really?” says Trump. “Is that
right?”
Yes, that’s right. One reason this
exchange marked me is that I found
myself in 2015 in a Yazidi refugee camp
in southeastern Turkey interviewing a
survivor named Anter Halef. In a corner
sat his 16-year-old daughter, Feryal. She
sobbed uncontrollably. I had seldom
seen such grief etched on a young face.
Life had been ripped from her before
she began to live. There was no road
back for her. Her eyes were empty
vessels left so by rape.
I have watched the Murad-Trump
exchange several times. It is scary. This
president is inhuman. Something is
missing. In his boundless self-absorp-
tion, he is capable of anything.
I am grateful to Brian Stelter of CNN
for recalling this month the words of
Edward R. Murrow in 1954 in response
to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s attempt
to provoke public frenzy at supposed
Communist infiltration of American life.
“We cannot defend freedom abroad by
deserting it at home,” Murrow says.
Of McCarthy, Murrow observes: “He
didn’t create this situation of fear; he
merely exploited it — and rather suc-
cessfully. Cassius was right. ‘The fault,
dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in
ourselves.’” And then: “Good night and
good luck.”Trump’s inhumanity before a victim of rape
In his
boundless
self-absorption,
this president
is capable
of anything.Roger Cohen
opinion
Testifying before Congress last week about his investi-
gation of Russian interference in the 2016 elections,
Robert Mueller, the former special counsel, seemed
eager — desperate, even — to drive home one message:
foreign adversaries are intent on undermining American
democracy, and the United States is still vulnerable to
them.
Even as Mr. Mueller declined to elaborate on most of
his findings, he was unequivocal in warning that Russia
meddled in the 2016 presidential race, that it aims to do
so again — “They’re doing it as we sit here,” he said —
and that “many more countries” are developing similar
capabilities. Declaring foreign interference “among the
most serious” challenges to American democracy, he
urged those with “responsibility in this area” to act
“swiftly.”
Mr. Mueller is right to be worried. While progress has
been made in safeguarding the nation’s electoral system,
partisan bickering has impeded Congress from enacting
a range of important reforms, from improving coordina-
tion between state and federal authorities to upgrading
election infrastructure to closing loopholes in campaign
finance laws. As is often the case, the legislative bottle-
neck is in the Republican-controlled Senate, but both
parties have done their part to politicize the issue.
Last year, Congress distributed $380 million to help
states with election-security upgrades such as strength-
ening cybersecurity, updating voting equipment and
improving postelection audits. This was a critical step.
But, as the Brennan Center for Justice noted in March, it
“only scratches the surface.” For instance, of the 121
election officials in 31 states who reported the need to
replace aging equipment before the 2020 election, two-
thirds said they lacked the funding to do so.
It’s tempting to blame the lack of progress on Presi-
dent Trump, in whose mind the topic of election security
has become tangled with questions about the legitimacy
of his 2016 win. White House aides have learned to avoid
this sore subject with the president, rendering his ad-
ministration unwilling and unable to prioritize it. In
some cases, members of Mr. Trump’s team have sought
to derail reform legislation, and many Republican law-
makers are loath to venture into such unstable territory.
But causes of this stalemate stretch far beyond the
president’s fragile ego. Mitch McConnell, the Senate
majority leader, has long opposed federal involvement in
election management. During the debate over the Help
America Vote Act of 2002, a reform package sprung
from the vote-counting failures of the 2000 presidential
race, Mr. McConnell repeatedly spoke out against a
one-size-fits-all approach in favor of leaving election
matters up to the states.
Mr. McConnell also may be the Senate’s fiercest cru-
sader against regulating the flow of campaign cash. It is
thus unsurprising that he has not embraced proposals
such as the bipartisan Honest Ads Act, which would
require funding transparency for online political ads, nor
the Disclose Act, a version of which has been introduced
in every Congress since 2010, aimed at exposing the
“dark money” flooding groups like labor unions, trade
associations and super PACs.
Even absent a president who considers election secu-
rity a personal affront, Mr. McConnell most likely would
be stonewalling, accusing Democrats, as he did recently,
of trying to “nationalize everything” and wanting “the
federal government to take over broad swaths of the
election process because they think that would somehow
benefit them.” As things stand, he is happy to exploit
tensions, spinning the calls for reform as an example of
how the president “gets picked at every day” by Demo-
crats. “They’re trying to keep the 2016 election alive,” he
contended last month. “They just can’t let it go.”
He may have a point. Mr. McConnell is not the only
lawmaker playing politics. Democrats have aggressively
pushed multiple bills that would require campaigns to
notify federal authorities of any offers of foreign assist-
ance. This might be a useful tightening of election law,
but it is also a rebuke of President Trump, whose cam-
paign team failed to report overtures by the Russians in
2016 and who recently expressed an openness to future
offers.
Such a measure has no chance of passing the Senate
and serves only to harden partisan divisions. In June,
Senate Democrats attempted to push through a bill to
this effect using a unanimous consent request. This
Wednesday, in the aftermath of Mr. Mueller’s testimony,
they tried again with not one but two bills.
Democrats are understandably frustrated by the
foot-dragging of the White House, Mr. McConnell and
other reform opponents. But for reform to make any
further progress in Congress before the 2020 election,
both sides must focus on minimizing, not stoking, the
tension between them. Abusing the cause of election
security to score political points is no way to safeguard
the nation.Robert Mueller
sounded the
alarm about
threats to
America’s
democracy, but
lawmakers
keep playing
politics.MR. MUELLER IS RIGHT TO BE WORRIED
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