Japanese girls just have more fun

Some 56% of Japanese women surveyed feel they have more fun in life than men while 69% would like to be born the same sex
TOKYO - Decades ago, many women in Japan might have wished to be born a man in their next life.
Japanese women today have high spending power, are able to go on overseas holidays on their own and can choose to put off marriage plans. -- AFP
Banish the thought, their modern-day counterparts say.
These days, Japanese women have high spending power, go on overseas holidays and choose to put off marriage plans.
So it is not surprising that for the first time, most of them believe they have more to enjoy in life than Japanese men, according to an official survey.
This change in outlook was discovered in last year's survey by the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, an organisation affiliated with the Ministry of Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.
While some saw the change as an indicator of women's rising status, others read it as a bleak prognosis about Japan's future, reported the Mainichi Shimbun.
'The results may indicate we have a society with little for men to enjoy,' the institute's spokesman, Mr Yoshiyuki Sakamoto, said.
The survey was started in 1953 and is conducted every five years. Last year's poll involved 2,350 women under the age of 80.
From 1953 until the 1970s, more than 60 per cent of respondents felt that Japanese society provided more enjoyment for men than women, while 20 per cent believed in the contrary.
The question - which gender do they think has a better time - was dropped from subsequent surveys until 1998.
By that time, the gap had narrowed.
Then in last year's survey, 56 per cent of the women surveyed believed they had more fun in life than their male counterparts.
And more than half also did not mind if they were born a woman again if given a second chance at life.
While only 27 per cent said they would like to be born the same sex back in 1958, last year's finding was 69 per cent.
Asked what their greatest enjoyment in life was, 45 per cent said it was their families.
Fewer respondents felt that money, love and society could give them joy compared to five years ago.
Source : Staitstime