Saitama high schools will allow girls to wear pants

High schools run by Saitama Prefecture that still have dress codes that require female students to wear skirts as part of their uniforms will soon allow girls to choose pants instead. The change is designed for transgender students whose gender identity is different from the one they were assigned at birth.

Tatsuya Furudo, 30, of Nijiizu, a general incorporated association supporting the LGBT community, greeted the news with positive feelings.

“I see students who have a hard time going to school every day because it is painful to wear a uniform that does not fit their gender identity, so I have always felt that it is a serious problem,” Furudo said.

“Some of those students who want to spend their school life as boys want to wear high-collared uniforms or similar clothing for boys, not pants for girls. I hope that in the near future, male and female uniforms will not be distinguished by color or pattern.” design”.

The Saitama prefectural board of education had issued its directive calling for the early introduction of pants for female students after a prefectural ordinance promoting social respect for sexual diversity went into effect in July 2022.

“It’s meant to make school environments more like the rest of society, where it’s normal for women to choose to wear skirts or pants,” an official said.

Although some schools have adopted genderless uniforms, others continue to require boys to wear stand-up collar uniforms and girls to wear sailor-style clothing, albeit with pants as a new option for them. But only about 3 percent of schools are allowing male students to choose to wear skirts as of May 2022. That figure is expected to remain unchanged for the 2023 academic year.

INCREASE IN ORDERS FOR GIRLS’ PANTS

Immediate result in sales, as the number of schools now allowing girls to wear pants has risen steadily across the country.

According to the Saitama Prefectural Board of Education, there are 130 high schools run by the prefecture that have female students and require them to wear uniforms. About 70 percent of those schools have allowed girls to wear pants since May 2021, but that number rose to 79 percent the following year.

According to a public relations representative for major school uniform manufacturer Kanko Gakuseifuku Co., pants for female students as protection against the cold began to be introduced in the late 1990s in Nagano Prefecture, Hokkaido, and elsewhere.

But the trend really started to take off after the Ministry of Education issued a directive in 2015 to education boards across the country instructing them to better accommodate students with gender dysphoria.

The number of schools ordering company-designed pants for girls increased by 800 to about 2,200 in the 2022 academic year, according to the company. “That number has increased considerably in the last three years,” the company representative added.

It is important to note that all high schools in Kanagawa, Nagano, and Gifu prefectures that require students to wear uniforms already allow girls to choose pants for their uniforms.

Mami Banba, a professor at Kyoto Kacho University who specializes in the history of clothing, welcomes diversified options for school uniforms. “Like speech and thought, it should be up to us to decide how we dress because clothes express our bodies,” Banba said. “I also think it’s necessary to have discussions about whether school uniforms are necessary at all.”