Withering institutions? Women's universities in Britain and Japan and the importance of their reputation for encouraging women in science.

Recently, the global community, from UNESCO to NGOs, is committed to promoting the status of women in science, engineering and technology, despite the long-held prejudice or lack of role models. From the late 1990s, governments in Britain and Japan began collaborating with various bodies, including higher education institutes. The paper underscores the importance of the reputation of women's universities embedded in the institutional foundations, by explaining how female scientific communities take shape in different national contexts. Britain, as a primary example of the neoliberal welfare regime, promoted its policy under the auspices of the Department of Trade and Industry, while Japan, as a conservative welfare regime with strong emphasis on the male-breadwinner model, carefully treated this matter from the perspective of 'equal participation of both men and women', rather than that of 'equality'. In this trend, women's universities, with their tradition of encouraging to become a 'good wife, wise mother' were regarded as legitimate and effective players to reverse the low ratio of women in scientific research (12.6 percent as of 2007, in contrast to 39.2 percent in Britain). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]