Gender Balance

As of today, the entire staff of the Public Relations and International Section of Jinja Honchō’s Edification Center is female. Admittedly, there are only three of them, but I do think this is significant.

While the section has been entirely male many times in the past, this is the first time it has been entirely female. This is because the section includes a section head, and this is the first time a woman has been appointed to this role. I think it is only the second time a woman has been appointed as a section head in Jinja Honchō. Fortunately for me, as this is the section I work with, the new section head has been in the section for a couple of years already, and we have a good working relationship. The other two staff have been transferred from elsewhere in Jinja Honchō, and so I haven’t worked with them before, but this has happened several times before, so I am sure I will cope. Staff at Jinja Honchō are transferred between sections a lot — I’m about the only person who can be confident of staying where I am.

The broader significance of this concerns changes in Jinja Shinto. The Jinja Shinto community has been male-dominated for centuries, although probably not forever, based on the earliest records we have. The original shift to male dominance was probably due to Chinese (specifically Confucian) influence, but the most recent cause was the Meiji government, which forbade women to be priests in Jinja Shinto.

This provoked opposition at the time, because there was a tradition of female priests, but the government had very little concern for the traditions of Shinto. Almost as soon as the government lost its authority at the end of the war, Jinja Honchō changed the rules to permit female priests, and shortly afterwards revised them again to explicitly permit female chief priests. However, seventy years of momentum were not overcome so easily, and while women have been nominally equal within Jinja Honchō for almost as long as it has existed, this has not been the case in practice. For example, I believe that there has never been a female director — there certainly haven’t been any while I have been paying attention.

That is why this change is significant. It shows that Jinja Honchō has started promoting women within the administrative offices. New department heads are generally appointed from among the people who have been head of several sections, something that takes a few years even with Jinja Honchō’s frequent moves, and while women were not appointed as section heads, there was no chance of them becoming department heads. On the other hand, now that there are at least two female section heads, there is a good chance that the first female department head will be appointed in ten years or so — maybe even a bit sooner.

The same seems to be true about the appointment of new priests. As I have mentioned in my posts about new priests, the two Shinto universities have recently (within the last three or four years) stopped remarking that it is hard for women to find places to serve as priests.

Thus, I think that the tide in Jinja Shinto has turned in the last few years. It will be a long time before we see a gender-balanced leadership, but I think we will see it unless something changes again. The women who are being appointed now will move up the hierarchy, and there is nothing in Shinto to encourage sexism when society does not. Of course, the Shinto hierarchy changes extremely slowly (Jinja Shinpō is still publishing obituaries for chief priests who have held that position since before I was born), and I am not at all confident that Jinja Honchō will have a female president in my lifetime. I do, however, expect to see a female director before I die.

Maybe not long before, but still…