Japanese men heading to work -
They continue to dominate work space, Credit: Daan Bauwens/IPS.
By Daan Bauwens
TOKYO, Jan
31 2013 (IPS) - Despite anti-discrimination laws and a
steadily growing number of employed women, Japan is falling behind the rest of the world on gender
equality. Widespread discrimination persists, and has only grown more subtle
over the past years.
Japan is one of the world’s most industrialised countries but
has always kept true to its old traditions. In the same way, traditional gender
roles have always been a source of inequality in the world’s third largest
economy. According to the United Nations Development Programme, Japan has consistently ranked as the most unequal of the
world’s richest countries.
And the gap seems to be
widening: last October the World Economic Forum’s annual report on gender gaps
downgraded Japan’s rank from 99 to 101, alongside Tajikistan and Gambia in terms of political and social equality.
To Yuko Ogasawara, professor of
sociology at Tokyo’s Nihon University, Japan’s downgrading doesn’t come as a surprise. “In this
country it is still impossible to combine work and family.” she tells IPS.
“That is the main reason behind the inequality. People, whether men or women,
are expected to work until ten every day. If you want to raise a family that’s
an obvious obstacle.”
Fifteen years ago Ogasawara
published ‘Office Ladies and Salaried Men’, a book describing the typical
Japanese office space where women were supposed to handle clerical work and
serve tea while men could climb up the executive ladder. “Much has changed
since then,” Ogasawara tells IPS. “There are more female executives now, women
are given more chances. But one problem remains: 70 percent of women drop out
of the work force after having their first baby.”
“After raising their children,
it is very difficult for many women to come back,” says Kathy Matsui, a macro
economist at one of Japan’s largest banks who has been studying employment of
Japanese women since 1999.
“Oftentimes the problem is
situated within organisations and their evaluation systems,” she tells IPS.
“Most human resources departments reject women when they have a ten-year blank
in their curriculum. For them, that suggests that you must have forgotten
everything you ever learned and therefore are not suitable for hiring. That is
subtle discrimination.”
“Women who do want to relaunch
their careers can only get part-time jobs with a low wage,” Yuko Ogasawara
adds. “They are very cheap compared to full-time workers, so lots of companies
want to keep the system as it is. It provides cheap labour force.’
Discrimination is deeply
engrained into the country’s institutions. “Japan has got numerous anti-discrimination laws,” says
Yoshiyuki Takeuchi, professor of economy at the University of Osaka, “but still tax, pension, social security and health
insurance are based on the model of a four-person family with a working father
and a stay-at-home mother.
“In Japan, companies pay men a higher salary if their wives stay
home. Women who restart as part-timers can only earn a limited amount of money.
These are rules and regulations that were developed during the seventies based
on the economic reality of that time. They have barely changed since then.
Nowadays they keep women from trying to restart a career.”
At the same time, Japan’s economic reality is changing very rapidly. The country
is deeply troubled by economic stagnation that started 20 years ago. The
population is aging very rapidly, the birth rate is declining, and the
country’s population is projected to shrink by around 30 percent by 2055.
“The work force is shrinking
and Japan is not very open to immigration,” Kathy Matsui tells
IPS. “There’s no other solution than to use your existing population more.
Women comprise 50 percent of the Japanese population, they are highly educated
but stop working at a certain age. There are no other options than to take
measures to try keeping women on the working track. This is not a feminist
point of view but the objective analysis of an economist.”
However, Japanese society
doesn’t seem very willing to accept the idea. A poll conducted by the Japanese
government in December showed that 51 percent of the population thinks women
should stay at home and care for the family while their husbands work.
That was 10.3 percent more than
the view in a similar survey in 2009. The increase was particularly noticeable
in the age category 20 to 30.
“Today’s young generation knows
what it means to grow up with a working mother,” says Suzanne Akieda, a Belgian
archaeologist who has been living and teaching in Japan for more than 40 years. “In the past lots of Japanese
women have tried to push aside their personal lives to pursue a career. Now
many start to reconsider if that was the right thing to do. This is the
backlash.”