School Culture and Gender : For Further Prornotion of Gender Equality

Japan has been recognized as one of the economically advanced countries in the world as being ranked in the 8th in the Human Development lndex. Nonetheless, in other recent statistics that involve “gender” the country significantly loses high positions in comparison with even many developing countries. “Gender Equality" is a national policy in Japan. The central government, local governments and many universities tackle with the action plans to progress toward the target. Yet, it is too late to try to change the gender relations at the university level. What seems important is to introducc effective education management into high schools where so-called “hidden curriculum” penetrates the school customs, contents of learning, textbooks, interactions between teachers and students, club activities, attitudes of teachers, organizations of tcachers and so on. This article examines the influences of the hidden curriculum through past research and analyses on the topic. It is revealed that “school culture” is not at all free from the gender consciousness rooted in the Japanese society. Thus, we need to steadily change the long-standing gendered school conventions as the male preferential roster has been changed to the one with an alphabetica1 order with both sexes rnixed