A is a Japanese term for a career woman. The term refers to the type of Japanese woman, married or not, that pursues a career to make a living and for personal advancement rather than being a housewife without occupation outside the home. The term came into use when women were expected to marry and become housewives after a short period working as an "office lady".
The term is used in Japan to describe the counterpart to the Japanese salaryman; a career woman in Japan also works for a salary, and seeks to supplement her family's income through work or to remain independent by seeking an independent career.
History Early history
In the early history of Japan, the status of women were higher as they were thought to have the special ability to communicate with spiritual or divine beings known as kami. The Japanese sun deity, Amaterasu, was female and reflects the sacred role of women in traditional Japanese matriarchal society. The social status of women began to decline in the beginning of the Muromachi period (1336). Following the Muromachi age and well into the late 1800s, lower-class women still received equal treatment compared to men in many areas. They were granted freedom of marriage, love, and equal treatment in regards to work, as they worked under much the same conditions as men.
Women of the elite classes were bound by a newly reformed version of Shinto, with heavy influences of Confucianism. Under the Confucian ethic of "three obediences" women were expected to show subservience to their fathers as girls, to their husbands as wives, and to their children in old age. This began the traditional Japanese image of the "Good Wife, Wise Mother" in which women were supposed to remain as housewives after marriage, caring for the household, cooking, sewing, and being subservient to their husbands. This, however, only proved a problem for women in the working world during the Meiji era (1868–1912). Despite class distinctions being abolished, Confucian ethics had penetrated into the culture, robbing women of most of their equal status. Women on farmlands still maintained some level of freedom with work, tending the fields with their husbands and children. Throughout the modernization of Japan, women were denied many of their rights, including the right to work in jobs filled primarily by men, to be paid comparably, and to work in a system that rewarded talent over seniority and sex.
Feminism in Japan
During the Meiji era, Haru Hiratsuka took up the pen name Raicho Hiratsuka and founded the first all-women literary magazine called Seitō, with a number of other like minded contributors. Seitō was published in 1911 with 134 pages at the start and only 1,000 copies were printed, but the launch of the magazine began the feminist movement in Japan. Hiratsuka herself stated in her first essay, "In the beginning, woman was truly the sun. An authentic person. Now she is the moon, a wan and sickly moon, dependent on another, reflecting another's brilliance." Indicating that women had fallen from their position of power as representations of the divine and were made subservient, reflecting the grandeur of others, becoming practically invisible on their own.
In the era of Westernization, more women were becoming educated and began to demand for their legal rights. Female leaders began to emerge in various positions in limit scale. The declining workforce in the aftermath of the First World War encouraged women to march for their equal rights. Though Seitō remained active only through 1915, Hiratsuka became a powerful figure to women everywhere in Japan.
One of her most important reforms, in 1919, was the petition to revise Article 5 of the police security regulations put into law in the year 1900. This severely limited the ability for women to attend political meetings or gather political information, which, as Hiratsuka noted, put working women at a disadvantage, because being politically knowledgeable was a partial necessity to have any hope of employment in the male dominated work force.
Second World War
During the Second World War, there was a major shortage of domestic workforce as majority of the men were drafted to join the military. Women, who had been primarily relegated to office work or more likely, bound to the home, began to seek employment to supplement their husbands' military incomes. This led to a small expansion of their capabilities. The influx of working women into the manufacturing industry to aid the war effort proved invaluable to the Japanese economy.
Following World War II, men returned home to start work again, but women were reluctant to return to being housewives, as was the case elsewhere in the world. During this postwar state, Japan was in a hurry to gain economic strength to match the west and women were a vital part of the labor force. Though their roles were still limited, many favoring secretarial work as office ladies, women could work in retail, typically if their family owned stores, they could work as teachers, or in the manufacturing industry. In 1947, the Japanese Labor Standards Law gave working women special treatment, which restricted their ability to work overtime, dangerous jobs, and night jobs, but allowed leave during menstruation periods. Though harmful for women seeking equal footing with men in the job world, it protected the majority of early career women who intended to marry.
When the recession hit in the mid-70's, the government began to support women workers as a way to bolster the economy. This began the famous M-Curve, which was a graph of the working age of women. Before marriage and after their children were raised proved to be the times women sought out employment, with a dip in between the two for child rearing. This roughly formed an M when charted graphically and the M-curve became the primary reference for working ages of Japanese women to this day. Despite the apparent support of Japanese women's new found independence, part-time pay for Japanese women was only 61% of a man's wages, gradually worsening as the 70's drew on.
By the early 80's 45.8% of women aged fifteen and above were in the labor force, the women population of Japan comprising roughly 37.4% of the entire work force. During this time, unmarried women did not make up the majority of the Japanese work force. Women age 36 and above accounted for a much larger percentage. Women who were home bound during this period also used piecework at home as a way of supplementing the family's income. Though the pay for this was incredibly poor, accounting for only a bare bones 25,000 yen per month.
Recent times By the year 2000, 40.7% of the total Japanese work force were female workers, with 56.9% of those women being married, indicating the path of career woman was not just open to the single women of Japan. By the end of the 1990s, women were concentrated in light manufacturing work, such as food production, as well as tertiary industries, like retail business, restaurants, and financing companies. In Japan, the idea of a part-time worker is someone who works for a set period, with no bonuses or fringe benefits. Many employers used part-time women workers as supplementary labor with no chance of advancement and unstable job security.
Despite some legislation passed in 1985 to ensure equality, both the Equal Opportunity Law, which prohibits discrimination, and the Child-Care Leave Law, which gives parents unpaid leave to tend to children, then return to their old position or a similar one, lacked any real power to drive change. No penalties were issued for companies that ignored this, meaning, only women who take on the same burden as male employees, of working full-time, with no breaks for pregnancy or child rearing, are able to have any hope of advancement. Boards of directors, public servants, and judiciary branches of work are typically closed to any career woman not willing to work full-time and overtime regularly. The largest part of the labor force are not the full-time career women, but housewives who work part-time, supplementing the household budget. In fact, the government discourages housewives from making too much money, because if housewives make a certain amount, they lose their husband's dependent allowance.
This limits the jobs women can do while married. In many instances of the Japanese work force, women who wish to receive equal pay and chances at promotion are expected to act like their salaryman counterparts. This is indicative of one of the problems women face when seeking employment in Japan. While equal in part, they still face discrimination. Many businesses lack the flexibility to offer work which fits the irregular schedules of housewives. There have been some strides forward however. The equal employment legislation of the 1980s did prohibit discrimination in the training, benefits, retirement, and dismissal, however, not in recruitment, hiring, or promotion.
Lost Decades Since 1991, Japan has undergone a protracted recession known popularly as the Lost Decades. After the real estate boom from 1986 to 1991, also known as the bubble economy, where a strong economy resulted in strong demand for and low unemployment, the Lost Decades resulted in drastic cutbacks among Japanese employers, causing a large increase in unemployment. Despite signs of recovery in the mid-2000s, the 2008 global economic recession has protracted these issues. Among this macroeconomic situation, large changes have been occurring within the Japanese economy that has changed the role of the working woman in Japan. Radical changes in government policies and focus has resulted in increased social care and the creation of dual-sector employment, which have affected female employment and the working housewife.
Challenges to the dominant male breadwinner model has led to changing social perspectives on the traditional role of the wife in providing familial care, although discrimination and stereotypes remain rampant. The creation of the double-track personnel management strategy in response to government affirmative action policies has contributed to the lack of women in management and gendered roles in the office.
Government policies The Lost Decades forced a radical change in legislation as the government was now dealing with major declines in the economy and the competitiveness of Japan in the world markets. Neoliberal trade liberalization policies resulted in increasing competitive pressures on Japanese companies, forcing many to reduce labor costs. The 1998 and 2003 revision of the Labor Standard Law and the 1999 Worker Dispatching Law allowed for easier dismissal of workers and relaxed regulations regarding hiring practices, along with the aforementioned Equal Opportunity Law.
As part-time workers, commonly known as freeters, are far less expensive than the traditional full-time lifelong worker whose wages traditionally increased with age, Japanese companies drastically increased the proportion of part-time workers to full-time workers. Among young adult workers, the percentage of full-time employees dropped from 90% in 1988 to 54% for a single, high-school educated female. Females are more significantly affected by development, as males are still able to maintain a higher ratio of full-time employment. The full-time employment rate of high-school educated males was at 78% in 2008 as compared to 75% for university educated females. As part-time workers receive lower wages, less employment protection and little benefits, female workers experience marginalization.
Changing social perspectives