Japan to support education for 4 mil women in developing countries

Superb news, and excellent initiative by PM Abe. Helping make a world where women everywhere can shine.

Good ol’ Abe!

Lets give money away to foreign countries!

Japan is so poor that public schools in Japan have so little money that they are turning off their winter heating to save money!!!!

Meanwhile taxes are going up in Japan!

Japanese are getting royally *****

While domestically they are being denied from medical school and rampant gender inequality. Go figure.

Ganbare Japan!Today  04:08 pm JST

Superb news, and excellent initiative by PM Abe. Helping make a world where women everywhere can shine.

Ganbare - an admirable intent - except the BIG problem is it's just Poli-Speak, because at home here in Japan, women are NOT shining which is why Japan is currently placed by the World Economic Forum as 114th placed out of 149 countries in gender equality rankings.

Just more lies to appease those who don't know or who don't want to know.

Facts are Facts.

How about starting at home... Honest exam results, equal opportunities, just a thought...

Is there also capacity to support that Swedish schoolgirl making quite a wave?

Excellent. Free education to 4 million non tax paying people in foreign countries while my kids have to pay to get an education. Go figure

It’s only a little over a hundred years ago that women were allowed to attend school in Japan.

That's a great initiative!

What I miss is after education, ensuring management or high political presence, including in Japan...

(I do not listen to the whiners mentioning always tax payers money and blah blah blah!)

While domestically they are being denied from medical school and rampant gender inequality. Go figure.

exactly, i can smell the hypocrisy from here...

How about equality for women and girls here rather than the usual sexism and misogyny that is served up generation after generation?

@ Kurispisu.

Totally agree with you . While the Japanese are getting "royalty " service , these declarations also "cue " the recipient countries to get ready for their turn .( ;-) )

Again, the road to hell is usually paved with good intentions.

Meanwhile in National section

NATIONAL33 women sue Tokyo Medical Univ over rigged entrance exams

Is enough to show the state of affairs in Japan. I really wish Japan cares about its people as much as it cares about its image overseas.

Women in Japan need support as well. Why not help women here first?

It’s only a little over a hundred years ago that women were allowed to attend school in Japan.

Since 1919?

Japan was actually one of the first countries in the world to have compulsory basic education for both boys and girls. It came in following the 1872 学制 (Gakusei) proclamation.

Prior to the Meiji Restoration (1867), the government took a completely hands off approach. There were thousands of private schools usually called terakoya 寺子屋 in English. It is known that a significant fraction of these schools were run by women. Woodblock prints from this era showing school scenes always show boys and girls. Similarly there is no shortage of woodblock prints and photographs showing both boys and girls in school settings nearly 150 years ago in Japan.

The well known Iwakura Mission of 1871-1873 included young women who were sent abroad to study at government expense. One of them was Tsuda Umeko who founded Tsuda Juku a prestigious college for women.

One of the remarkable things about the history of education in Japan is the absence of arguments saying that women and girls should not be educated. Even the most conservative ideologues believed women should have basic education.

Tokugawa Education (1965) by Ronald Dore remains as a classic in area of premodern Japanese education. The literature on Meiji (late 19th century) Japanese education is voluminous.

Will any of this women realize it was Japan that paid for their education.

We should help our own first, we already give help and support to other countries.

Great initiative by Japan. But with the current education woes of women, shouldn’t there be more focus on helping women here succeed and getting more opportunities in the work place? After creating a stable example, shift your focus outwards.

Sacrifice Japanese/Northeast Asians to satisfy others, that is Abe's priority, no doubt about it.

Recommend Abe for Nobel Peace Aword.

Methinks Japan needs to focus on improving conditions for women in their own country first.

I don't want the tax money I pay going overseas. Have an optional "international tax" for that.

One might wonder just what the "education gap" between boys and girls is.

It varies from country to country but the average school life expectancy for boys worldwide is 12 years and for girls the average worldwide school life expectancy is 12 years. There are actually very few developing countries where girls are schooled significantly less than boys with boys getting less education in about the same number.

There are a lot of developing countries where all children have low school life expectancy.

In Malala Yousafzai's home country of Pakistan the gap between boys and girls is 1 year; 1 year longer for boys. In other developing countries like Bangladesh there is a 1 year gap with girls getting an extra year in school. If we only pour money into girls in developing countries we are failing. Why don't we help the boys in Eritrea (6 years) as well as the girls (5 years)?

Abe and his croonies are at it - again. It will be so nice if GOJ deals with their own internal issues with women here before committing to the outside.

I don't want the tax money I pay going overseas. Have an optional "international tax" for that.

To add to what I said above... An international charity should be handling helping to fund education overseas, NOT tax-payers. And stop with the yearly record-breaking defense spending! J-Gov is like a teenager with its parents' credit cards.

I’d believe the sincerity of his actions if in his own home country women weren’t so oppressed as second class citizens. No one ever accuse our dear leader of being an upright person.

Pardon the exaggeration, but it sounds to me as though most of you are saying no country should give aid to another unless the country has, for example, its entire population driving beemers or living on superyachts...

Here we have the G20 giving aid to developing countries (which includes some of its members) to help educate their women. Comparing deprived women in developed countries to those in developing countries doesn't sound right.