JAPAN: Government seeks to make commuting easier with issue of maternity badges to pregnant women

Commuting to and from work everyday is a chore for 28-year old Fumie Sasaki. Her thirty minutes walk and train ride to and from her downtown office is short by Japanese standards -- but now nine months in to her pregnancy, its a gruelling trudge through the hot summer streets and into the crowded public transportation system. What has made it more of a drudgery, is that in her nine months of pregnancy she has rarely been given a seat on the subway despite reserved "courtesy" seats in every carriage. More often than not, she says, people pretend to be asleep or avoid eye contact with her altogether even in her late stage of pregnancy. On Monday (August 7) she got a break. A woman and child about to get off at the next stop gave her a seat. That however is a rare treat, she said. "In the nine months of my pregnancy I have been given seats on the train exactly four times," she told Reuters one week before she was due to take her maternity leave. As a career woman in a recruiting company, she says it was exhausting going about her daily work - much of it requiring her to travel around the city. "Whether its commuting to work or moving from one meeting (with a client) to another by train or foot is extremely exhausting. So any opportunity to sit down even for a moment would be extremely helpful," she said. Help, however, is now available for people like her from the Japanese government. Pregnant women like Fumie Sasaki and Yoshiko Kato can now go to every train station in Tokyo and get what is being called a "Maternity Badge" that will help identify pregnant women, and it is hoped, help them get seats on trains. While such badges existed before in Tokyo, they were not widely known and mostly provided by private organisations and non-profit organisations. Now with the backing of the Japanese Health and Welfare Ministry, the sixteen private and public subway lines launched an official version earlier this month. So far it's hard to gauge whether these badges bearing the drawing of a mother and child and a written sign in Japanese saying "I have a baby in my womb" have had an effect, but the train operators hope it will change things for the better. "We have yet to truly hear that the maternity badges have made a difference, but in practice it should make it easier for pregnant women to be given seats on the train," Takuya Masuda, deputy director of the passenger transport division of the Tokyo Metro. At Suitengu Shrine, dedicated to the gods of conception and child bearing, expectant mothers are also hopeful. "When I was three months pregnant and got on the train, no one would really notice me and I couldn't really ask them to give me a seat. So these badges, I hope, will help some people to notice I am pregnant. But these badges are not very well known yet so I hope they do get more widely accepted," said Yoshiko Kato, now five months pregnant. Fumie Sasaki and many other women blame a Japanese culture that has rarely been chivalrous towards women as the reason behind why many pregnant women in Japan fail to get seats on crowded trains. However not everyone agrees. "I do however understand the feeling of other commuters though -- they're all tired. During commuting hours they're all tired and sleepy so we're all in the same boat really," said Mika Nomura, a 27-year old housewife pregnant with her second son. Some say men and younger people may have a harder time understanding the difficulties of being a pregnant woman. "Pregnancy has helped me understand why I should give up my seat, but for men it can be difficult to understand. So this badge could be a good thing," Chiyako Koizumi, 32-year-old housewife pregnant with her first baby. Others also say many Japanese are worried they may embarrass themselves and mistakenly giving a seat to a non-pregnant woman. "With elderly people its easy to spot them but pregnant women aren't always obvious so the badge should help them," said Isao Koizumi, Chikako's husband.

ITN Source | August 11, 2006

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