Changing roles of women in the workplace/family in Japan.
The traditional role of women underscores the deeply-rooted nature of inequality in the gender roles and relationships in Japan. However, in today’s Japan, such traditional attitudes are changing, as illustrated by the emergence of a class of young, educated and professional women, who prefer to remain single, in order to preserve their freedom. Traditional gender roles in Japan are characterized by a strong sense of patriarchy in society, which account for the bifurcation of the productive and reproductive spheres, with a distinct separation of gender roles. In the family, this refers to the idea of the man as the primary breadwinner of the family, and the woman as the primary caregiver in the family. Women are also marrying later, with the average age of first marriage at 26.3 years in 1995, compared to 25.4 in 1983.
With the rising problems faced by the Japanese economy, there have been changes in the structured patterns of gender in both the family and the workplace. Economic recessions in the country have forced many women to enter the workforce in order to increase the level of income earned for the family. With an increasing number of women in the workforce, the existing gender ratios have been altered favoring increased gender equality in that women now have a greater say in the family, and also participate more in the workforce.
Gender inequality, however, continues in family life, the workplace, and popular values. The notion expressed in the proverbial phrase "good wife, wise mother," continues to influence beliefs about gender roles. Most women may not be able to realize that ideal, but many believe that it is in their own, their children's, and society's best interests that they stay home to devote themselves to their children, at least while the children were young. Many women find satisfaction in family life and in the accomplishments of their children, gaining a sense of fulfillment from doing good jobs as household managers and mothers. In most households, women are responsible for their family budgets and make independent decisions about the education, careers, and life-styles of their families. Women also take the social blame for problems of family members. Gender roles in the family bear a close relationship to the situation in the workforce, where there is a strong male dominance in the company hierarchy. Resultantly, males possess increased career opportunities, unlike females, who are marginalized in the workforce and are considered to be temporary labour, expected to resign upon marriage or childbirth. As can be seen, there is an intimate family-work relationship in Japanese society and this hinges on the traditional gender roles within society.
Women's educational opportunities have increased in the twentieth century. Among new workers in 1989, 37 % of women had received education beyond upper-secondary school, compared with 43 % of men, but most women had received their postsecondary education in junior colleges and technical schools rather than in universities and graduate schools.
After World War II, the fixed image of the Japanese woman has been that of the office lady, who becomes a housewife after marriage. But a new generation of educated women is emerging, that is seeking a career as a working woman. Japanese women are joining the labour force in unprecedented numbers. In 1987 there were 24.3 million working women (40% of the labor force), and they accounted for 59% of the increase in employment from 1975 to 1987. The participation rate for women in the labour force rose from 45.7% in 1975 to 50.6% in 1991.
In 1990 approximately 50 % of all women over fifteen years of age participated in the paid labor force. At that time, two major changes in the female work force were under way. The first was a move away from household-based employment. Peasant women and those from merchant and artisan families had always worked. With self-employment becoming less common, though, the more usual pattern was separation of home and workplace, creating new problems of child care, care of the elderly, and housekeeping responsibilities. The second major change was the increased participation of married women in the labor force. In the 1950s, most women employees were young and single; 62 % of the female labor force in 1960 had never been married. In 1987 about 66 % of the female labor force was married, and only 23 % was made up women who had never married. Some women continued working after marriage, most often in professional and government jobs, but their numbers were small. Others started their own businesses or took over family businesses. More commonly, women left paid labor after marriage, and then returned after their youngest children were in school. These middle-age recruits generally took low-paying, part-time service or factory jobs. They continued to have nearly total responsibility for home and children and often justified their employment as an extension of their responsibilities for the care of their families. Despite legal support for equality and some improvement in their status, married women understood that their husbands' jobs demanded long hours and extreme commitment. Because women earned an average of only 60 % as much as men, most did not find it advantageous to take full-time, responsible jobs after marriage, if doing so left no one to manage the household and care for children.
Yet women's status in the labor force was changing in the late 1980s, most likely as a result of changes brought about by the aging of the population. Longer life expectancies, smaller families and bunched births, and lowered expectations of being cared for in old age by their children have all led women to participate more fully in the labor force. At the same time, service job opportunities in the postindustrial economy expanded, and there were fewer new male graduates to fill them.
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