mai yokoyama

A national survey on the compensation and working conditions of counselors irregularly employed at privatized Gender Equality Centers was conducted using mailed questionnaires. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to obtain in―depth information on wages and working conditions. Compared to the national survey data from 2012, the results of the latest survey showed that counselors’ compensation has deteriorated, despite an increased number of jobs. From a case-study approach, it was shown that counselors’ wages were not related to the extent of jobs they perform, the number of cases they counsel, or the wages of government officers who are in regular employment. Moreover, there were unpaid counselors at centers in the same municipality where the wages of government officers in regular employment were higher than the national average. Most interviewees argued that their wages were affected by labor costs which were based on the local government estimated budgets. Centers where the labor cost was calculated based on the minimum wages of psychological specialists led to relatively better wages of counselors. On the contrary, some local governments decided labor costs based on the minimum wage in the municipality. To conclude, wages of counselors have not been determined consistently based on some criteria.

The meaning of the statement, “sexual assault disintegrates personality” wasinvestigated from the perspective of Goffman’s sociology. Psychological and psychiatric studies have indicated that survivors of sexual assaulttend to suffer trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The effects of socialnorms on the survivors of sexual assault have also been discussed sociological studies.In societies that have male-dominated sexual norms, women suffering sexual assaulttend to be stigmatized. Some sociologists have argued that behind such negativeperspectives, there is a “sexuality-personality principle,” a norm that associates sexualitywith the personality; if this connection is broken, the survivors can be relieved of theirtrauma. Others have argued that sexual assault actually disintegrates the personality,and maintaining and reinforcing a “sexuality-personality principle” is important in orderto resist sexual assault. The discussion of the validity of identifying sexuality withpersonality was named as an argument about “sexuality-personality” in the presentstudy. However, this argument is an insufficient means of resisting sexual assault, and itcould trivialize survivors’ problems. This study focused on the stigma of the survivors ofsexual assault and examined the meaning of the statement, “sexual assault disintegratespersonality” from a sociological perspective. The results indicated that this statementimplies that sexual assault inevitably makes the social relationships of the survivorsunstable and continues to demand changes which put the survivors in uncomfortablesurround.