Introduction
In Japan, the Act on Support for Women Facing Difficult Problems (hereafter, the Act) entered into force in April 2024. For decades, such support had been organized through a public women’s protection system administered under the Anti-Prostitution Act. Enacted in 1956 and fully enforced in 1958, the Anti-Prostitution Act aimed to prevent prostitution by regulating acts that facilitated it, while also positioning women deemed “likely to engage in prostitution” by reason of their conduct or environment as objects of “protection and rehabilitation.” The new Act reorganizes the basis of public support by grounding it not in “protection and rehabilitation,” but in women’s welfare, respect for human rights, and the wishes of the person concerned. At the same time, the Anti-Prostitution Act remains in force, including criminal penalties for soliciting prostitution. The coexistence of penal regulation and support therefore raises the possibility that punishment itself may become a barrier to seeking support when people face violence, coercion, or exploitation.
Furthermore, the Basic Policy on Measures for Supporting Women Facing Difficult Problems (hereafter, the Basic Policy) explicitly refers to “careful and attentive social work” supporting self-determination and choice (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare [MHLW] 2023). This article takes the Act as an occasion to revisit the marginal position of feminist perspectives within Japanese social work.
Feminist perspectives have not occupied a central place in mainstream social work in Japan. Yachiyo Sudo—a Japanese social work scholar known for her work on feminism and gender—points out that the “Women’s Welfare/Gender” section of the Japanese Society for the Study of Social Welfare has been “ghettoized” as a space where only a very small number of researchers gathered (Sudo 2020: 54). This relegation of feminism to a narrowly defined field is precisely the problem: feminism should not be confined to women’s support or welfare, but should be repositioned as a perspective for questioning social work as a whole.
This article first clarifies the feminist perspective used here, then examines how the category “women” shapes what becomes intelligible as a difficulty and what remains invisible, how gendered categories and expectations are produced through assessment and intervention, and how support labor is organized and valued.
What Is a Feminist Perspective?
In this article, a feminist perspective does not simply mean a perspective “for women.” bell hooks writes, “Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression” (hooks 2000: 1). Her definition locates feminism not in “women” as its object but in opposition to sexism.
Defining feminism in relation to sexism rather than treating “women” as a self-evident object also opens that category itself to question. Crenshaw’s discussion of intersectionality showed how Black women can be made invisible when feminist and antiracist frameworks each proceed along a single axis (Crenshaw 1989). Building on this critique, this article asks: how do frameworks for understanding “women’s difficulties” treat the relations of power through which particular difficulties are produced—as interconnected or separate?
The feminist perspective adopted here does not treat gender as a fixed binary attribute given in advance. Hicks warns that social work may, even when addressing gendered needs, reify gender and isolate it from other social relations. He argues that social work should instead attend to gender as a practical accomplishment occurring within particular settings and contexts (Hicks 2015). From this perspective, gender is treated here not simply as an attribute people possess, but as something accomplished as people act and are interpreted and classified in situated practices. The question is therefore how gendered categories and expectations are made relevant through support practices, and with what consequences.
On this basis, this article approaches feminism as both a normative and an analytical perspective: one that opposes sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression while asking how categories make particular difficulties intelligible across intersecting relations of power, how gender is made relevant through support practices, and how support labor is organized and valued.
How Does the Category of “Women” Operate in Support?
The Basic Policy states that any woman who falls within the situations defined by the Act may receive support as needed “regardless of age, disability, nationality, etc.” It also states that women, by virtue of being women, are more likely to face sexual violence and sexual exploitation; that there are “problems specific to women,” such as unintended pregnancy; and that women are at risk of socio-economic difficulties including unstable employment, economic hardship, and isolation (MHLW 2023). This framing locates women’s difficulties within gendered social conditions rather than solely as individual problems. Yet broad eligibility does not ensure an intersectional understanding: the question is whether support attends to intersecting relations rather than separating them into distinct problems or service categories.
Consider Kalakasan, a private organization that supports foreign-national and migrant women and children. Its staff accompany women as interpreters at government offices, supplement explanations provided by government offices and organizations, and offer consultation in their first languages. It also regards support for mothers and children who have experienced violence and for single-mother households as a particular strength of its work; while accompanying them in deciding for themselves how to move forward, it provides counseling that includes psychological support as well as small-group exchange activities (Kawasaki City Gender Equality Center 2016). Kalakasan’s practice shows that language and access to institutions are addressed together with family relationships, violence, childrearing, and children’s circumstances. An intersectional reading therefore asks whether these conditions are understood together in defining “women’s difficulties,” rather than separated into distinct problems.
Furthermore, the Basic Policy separately addresses “transgender persons whose gender identity is female” (hereafter, transgender women). It states that, in consideration of difficulties arising from human rights violations and discrimination related to being transgender, “it is desirable to consider possible support” in light of the person’s circumstances and consultation, while also considering “other support recipients” (MHLW 2023). This differs from the general provision, which states that women meeting the Act’s definition may receive support as needed regardless of age, disability, or nationality. By framing support for transgender women separately and in relation to other support recipients, the policy expresses their inclusion less firmly than the general provision does. From a feminist perspective, the issue is not only where the boundary of “woman” lies, but how that boundary is made consequential in the terms of support.
The Basic Policy classifies unintended pregnancy as a “problem specific to women,” while calling for support for decision-making concerning pregnancy, childbirth, and abortion (MHLW 2023). From a feminist perspective, this raises a question about how reproductive capacity becomes associated with the category of “women.” The issue is not whether pregnancy should be addressed in women’s support, but what this association makes more or less visible within that category.
Taken together, these examples show that broad formal inclusion does not by itself determine how the category of “women” operates in support. They highlight how intersecting conditions may be held together or separated, how inclusion may be stated as ordinary or exceptional, and how reproductive capacity becomes associated with the category itself.
Assessment, Intervention, and the Labor of Support
Social work does not simply respond to problems already given. Through assessment, categorization, and intervention, it participates in defining problems, subjects of support, and appropriate responses. A feminist perspective asks where sexism and gendered inequality operate in these processes, while also asking how gender is made relevant through them.
A newspaper reported that a wheelchair-using woman with cerebral palsy was preparing, after giving birth, to raise her child as a single mother while using home-helper services, but a child guidance center took the newborn into temporary protective custody on the grounds of concerns about childrearing. The child guidance center reportedly asked that she live with her parents for an extended period and receive their help with childrearing (San’in Chuo Shimpo Digital 2026).
Notably, this case arose outside the field of women’s support, illustrating why feminist perspectives confined to women’s welfare may be insufficient for questioning social work more broadly.
Examined from a feminist perspective, this case raises not only the question of whether the assessment reflects sexism or ableism, but also how “parenting capacity” was constituted. The proposed home-helper arrangement and the center’s request that she rely on her parents both involved support from others, yet they were not treated equivalently. Why was dependence on family accepted as a solution while planned home-helper assistance did not secure the same confidence in her capacity to parent? Because she was preparing to parent as a single mother, this contrast also raises a question about how family form entered the assessment of capable motherhood. Assessment here does not simply measure an existing capacity; it helps constitute a standard of capable motherhood shaped by assumptions about disability and dependence.
Moreover, when social work itself is questioned from a feminist perspective, this question must also be directed toward those who provide support. The public women’s protection system, grounded in the sexist Anti-Prostitution Act, and private organizations, often relying on the accumulated work of women’s movements and the commitment of supporters, have sustained women facing difficulties. Yet such consultation and support labor has not been sufficiently valued as professional labor. As Katada explains, although women’s counselors have undertaken highly specialized social work, their expertise and status as workers have not been sufficiently valued institutionally (Katada 2021). In private shelters and the field of domestic violence consultation and support as well, continuity and expertise in support are required, yet the financial foundations and working conditions that sustain this labor have remained fragile (Ogawa 2021). What is at stake here is that the labor of supporting women facing difficulties has often itself been sustained by women’s unstable and undervalued labor.
If feminism is confined to women’s support, the undervaluation of this labor may remain framed as a problem specific to that field. The broader question for social work is how associations among care, support, and women’s work shape what counts as professional expertise and how such labor is valued. What is required after the Act is therefore not to confine feminism to support for women, but to rethink social work itself from a feminist perspective.
Conclusion
The Act shifts the basis of public support away from the women’s protection system under the Anti-Prostitution Act, even as penal regulation remains. Yet what must be questioned is not institutional reform alone. The analysis has shown that broad formal inclusion does not determine how “women” operates as a category of support, that assessment can help constitute standards of capable motherhood, and that specialized support labor can remain undervalued. From a feminist perspective, the task is not only to oppose sexism within support practices, but also to question how social work defines problems, organizes intervention, and values labor.
References
Crenshaw, Kimberlé (1989) Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics, University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989(1), 139–167.
Hicks, Stephen (2015) Social Work and Gender: An Argument for Practical Accounts, Qualitative Social Work 14(4), 471–487.
hooks, bell (2000) Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics, South End Press.
Katada, Kaori (2021) Neo-liberal Welfare Restructuring and Women’s ‘Independence Support’: On Debates over the ‘Review’ of the Women’s Protection System, The Journal of Ohara Institute for Social Research 757, 33–45.
Kawasaki City Gender Equality Center (2016) Difficulties that Foreign Nationality Brings to Women and Children, Scrum 55, 2–7.
Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (2023) Basic Policy on Measures for Supporting Women Facing Difficult Problems.
Ogawa, Mariko (2021) Labor Issues in Private Shelters and the Field of Domestic Violence Consultation and Support, Journal of Feminist Economics Japan 6, 57–83.
San’in Chuo Shimpo Digital (2026) [Childbirth by Persons with Disabilities] ‘Concerns about Childrearing’ Separate Mother and Child, February 16.
Sudo, Yachiyo (2020) From Women’s Welfare to Feminist Social Work: Toward the Post-Butler Era, Yokoyama, Toshiko, Sudo, Yachiyo and Oshima, Eiko eds. Revitalizing Social Work Practice: The Impact of Feminism and Gender, Heureka. 53–98.