Founder Profile
FounderMari Hamada
After graduating from the School of Education at Waseda University, Mari Hamada completed her master’s in the Gender and Social Sciences specialization at the Graduate School of Humanities and Sciences at Ochanomizu University. She is currently enrolled in the doctoral program at the same graduate school. While attending graduate school, Mari conducted research on “harassment against female politicians”, a topic that had received little attention by then. After graduating, Mari continued her research as a collaborative researcher with the Politics and Gender in East Asia Research Team at the Institute for Gender Studies at Ochanomizu University. To date, Mari has conducted interviews and has received consultation responses regarding harassment involving more than 350 legislators and candidates (as of October 2024). In an effort to apply her research into tangible action, she founded Stand by Women in 2021, an organization where women support female legislators and candidates in elections. The organization includes researchers, working professionals, students, and other members, and provides election support, social media consulting, and support for responses to harassment. In 2021, Mari served as a member of a Cabinet Office study group on the creation of “FY2021 Training Materials for the Prevention of Harassment in the Political Field,” and helped develop materials to be used for harassment training in legislative bodies. In the same year, she also began implementing Japan’s first bystander training program as part of harassment training. In 2022, she launched the “Kosodate Senkyo Hack! Project,” which supports women raising children who run for office, assisting 34 mother candidates. In 2023, ahead of the April unified local elections, she established the “Harassment Consultation Center for Women Legislators,” Japan’s first free consultation service for legislators. She has also given lectures on politics and gender at universities and gender equality centers, and has conducted harassment prevention training for more than 4,000 legislative-related individuals (as of August 2025). She continues to work to solve the problem of harassment in the political sphere through a variety of approaches.
Publications
ZINE: We Want More Female Legislators
Japan ranks 139th out of 146 countries in the Gender Gap Index for political participation. Why are there so few female lawmakers in Japan?
The stereotype that politicians are men in suits, the perception that the job is incompatible with family life, and the harassment faced by female lawmakers and candidates that often goes unseen.
We are considering the first steps toward enabling diverse people to participate in politics to address evolving social issues.
We want to work with many people to dismantle the male-dominated “politics” that has persisted for so long and make it something more diverse people can engage with.
Table of Contents- Introduction
- Chapter 1: How Many Female Legislators Are There?
- Chapter 2: Why Do We Need More Women?
- Chapter 3: Why the Number of Female Legislators Isn't Increasing
- Chapter 4: Harassment Issues Facing Female Legislators
- Chapter 5: Support Activities for Female Legislators and Candidates
- Chapter 6: What We Can Do: Support, Volunteering, Bystander Intervention
- Appendix 1: Election Volunteer Handbook
- Appendix 2: Let's Try Election Volunteering with Kids! Leaflet
- Appendix 3: Recommended Reading List for Those Who Want to Learn More
Election Volunteer Handbook
This handbook provides simple, easy-to-understand explanations for election volunteer beginners, covering everything from "What You Can Do to Help" to "Basic Knowledge of the Public Offices Election Act."
It is available for free download below.
Download
