WUNRN
The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus
http://japanfocus.org/-Helen-Macnaughtan/4302/article.html
Womenomics
Japan: Is the PM Abe Policy for Gendered Employment Viable in an Era of
Precarity? 日本にとってのウーマノミクス 安部政権、雇用政策のジェンダー化はプレカリアートの時代に実現可能か The
Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue. 12, No. 1, March 30, 2015 By
Helen Macnaughtan Womenomics is a theory that advocates the empowerment of women,
arguing that enabling women to have access to equal participation in an
economy and society will result in economic benefits and social progress. The
need for Japan to implement womenomics was first advocated by Kathy Matsui in
1999, and since 2013 Prime Minister Abe’s government has pledged to promote
womenomics as policy.1 In theory, womenomics is a viable
policy for Japan. I argue, however, that gendered norms and practices in
Japanese society act as a strong impediment to its realization. In addition,
the approach being taken by the Abe government is flawed by underlying gender
bias. This article outlines the historical context of current womenomics
policy, provides a critical analysis of implementation strategies discussing
progress and socio-structural obstacles, and concludes with an assessment of
the viability of womenomics for Japan. Locating womenomics: the Japanese context Prime Minister of Japan Abe Shinzō has pledged to create a
society in which “all women can shine” (subete no josei ga kagayaku nihon
e). Writing in the Wall Street Journal in September 2013, Abe
acknowledged that womenomics was not a new concept, but that his government’s
commitment to pursuing it in Japan was new.2 Why is the
government now adopting womenomics? There are arguably two key reasons.
First, Japan has come under increasing international criticism because of the
low level of gender equality in society, including high profile comments such
as that from Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the IMF.3 Since
1999, Kathy Matsui of Goldman Sachs Japan has argued that a key solution for
Japan’s economic woes is her brand of womenomics, advocating breaking down
structural impediments in the labour market and raising female labour participation
to that of men in order to generate GDP growth. At the very least, Abe wants
to appear to be responding to this international criticism and has latched
onto the concept of womenomics, a term which fits neatly into his Abenomics
policy. Second, on the domestic front, Japan is dealing with well-known
demographic and economic challenges, including a declining and aging
population, low birth rate, emerging labour shortage, low GDP growth rates,
deflation and stagnating levels of domestic investment and consumer spending.
All of this has combined to prompt the government to acknowledge that
Japanese women have long been underutilised in the economy and must now be
called upon to help ‘save Japan’. Since taking office in December 2012, Abe has been pushing his
agenda of economic growth and reform known as Abenomics. With the headline
that “Japan is Back”, Abenomics is focused on the so-called “three arrows” of
(1) fiscal stimulus (2) monetary easing and (3) structural reform. As part of
the third arrow, Abe has been citing ‘womenomics’ with a promise to enable
Japanese women to ‘shine’, better contribute to the economy and reach
leadership positions. But in precisely what way and how are women to ‘shine’?
Is Abenomics a program, a set of policies, or simply a somewhat condescending
statement that women have not been ‘shining’ in Japan.4 Based
on Matsui’s central argument about enabling women to raise their current
levels of participation in the paid economy, the Abe government claims that
it is advancing a new approach to women’s employment. However, I will
demonstrate that, far from a new approach, it remains wedded to much that has
been attempted previously and with scant results. In the early 1960s,
Japanese women were perceived as essential to meet increased demand for
labour under high levels of economic growth. Given official reluctance to
seek additional labour via immigration, women were encouraged into the
workplace. Specifically, they were encouraged to work for a few years before
marriage as regular workers and then again after several years of
child-rearing as non-regular workers.5 The result was a
system of highly gendered employment that continues today. Under the guise of
womenomics, many aspects of this system are being reinforced and Japanese
women are again being asked to fill a gap. This time there is both a supply
and demand gap for them to help re-stimulate economic growth. This is due in
part to the long underutilisation of female labour but is also the product of
a growing labour shortage under depopulation. The government once again wants
more women to work as a means to fill a perceived employment gap and support
a core male labour force. I show that Abe’s brand of womenomics has little
intention to question the gendered status quo of an employment system that
allocates productive roles to men and reproductive roles to women. On the
surface there is the promise of delivering gender equality, but gender
equality has been debated since the mid-1980s only to stall again and again.
If the Abe government really had gender equality as an aim then key barriers
both in society and in the workplace would need to be challenged and
overcome. Herein lies the crux of the policy known as womenomics that is
being prescribed for Japan by Matsui and loosely translated by the Abe
government. In sum, the womenomics being prescribed for Japan assumes an
implicit gender bias: the assumption that core male employment is normative.
Moreover, womenomics will have only limited success at best because it is
focused on women. In order to really deliver employment equality, womenomics
needs to include men too. The gendered life cycle of work in Japan Japan’s post-war employment system is well-known for being
distinctly gendered, and has been described as having a “gender fault line”.6 The
system is founded on the male breadwinner model, with men primarily
responsible for productive roles and women for reproductive roles within the
family unit and more broadly in society. At its core, this division of labour
is premised on harnessing the strong commitment of a core male workforce with
stable employment while making use of a supporting non-regular workforce
which has increasingly comprised female workers. While the male breadwinner
model was certainly not unique to Japan in the early post-war years, its
persistence as an ideology over time is striking, particularly when comparing
employment practices with that in other advanced nations. Even though the
reality of this model has been much debated – with the acknowledgement that
at best only one third of the Japanese workforce has ever been within this
core elite ‘lifetime’ system – this model continues to be held as an ‘ideal’
and is a pervasive force underpinning the political and institutional
organisation of work. While acknowledging the increasingly precarious reality
of work for both women and men in Japan, I will argue that an attachment to
this male breadwinner model continues to impede any real progress toward
gender equality, and that any solution to employment problems must go beyond
Abe conceptions of womenomics and seek to break down gendered norms for both
men and women in Japan. On the surface, it appears that working women have made
progress. The number of women in the labour force has risen from 18.3 million
in 1960 to 26.5 million in 2012, an increase of 45%, compared to a 38%
increase in the overall Japanese population.7 Women now make
up 42.3% of the entire Japanese work force. It is therefore evident that
working women are already a mainstay feature of the Japanese economy.
However, over the course of their working life cycle Japanese men and women
work in significantly different patterns as illustrated in figure 1. While
Japanese male employment follows the ‘inverted-U’ pattern, female employment
takes the shape of the well-known ‘M-curve’ pattern of employment. What do
recent movements in the ‘inverted-U’ and ‘M-curve’ signify for male and
female employment in Japan today?
An analysis of the inverted-U employment pattern shows that the
male labour participation rate in Japan is high – averaging 95% during the
key productive ages of 25-60 years, and conversely male unemployment rates
are low (though there has been a slight 1-3% increase in male unemployment in
the 20s and 30s age groups since 1990). By 2012, Japanese males were delaying
their entry into the workforce (reflective of longer years of education) and
retiring earlier when compared with 1960, but otherwise there has been little
change over time. Japanese male employment is high by comparison with their
peers in other developed countries. Japanese men aged 25-60 have an average
participation rate of 95% (second highest in the OECD), compared to 87% in
the USA, 90% in the UK and 92% in Germany.8 The Japanese
employment system prioritises and protects full male employment. On the one
hand this provides a comparatively high level of employment stability for
men. On the other hand, it hinders choice and opportunity for Japanese men,
and creates gender rigidity. By contrast, the pattern of female labour participation shows
significant change between 1960 and 2012. First, there has been a striking
increase in the proportion of women participating in employment across all
age groups, and this is particularly notable in older age cohorts. In 2012,
77.6% of females aged 25-29 were employed compared to 50% in 1960, and 75.7%
of females aged 45-49 were working compared to 56.5% in 1960. The increased
labour participation of women over the age of 35 years established the M
shape, creating the rise of the second curve from the 1960s. Second, the dip
in the M is flattening and moving to the right, indicating that fewer women
are dropping out of employment during the peak childrearing years, that women
are delaying the age at which they have marry and have children, or indeed
are opting not to marry or have a child. The fertility rate declined from 2.0
in 1960, 1.76 in 1985, to a low of 1.26 in 2005, up to 1.42 in 2014, while
the proportion of births out of wedlock remains low at 2.2% in 2013.9 The
mean age of Japanese mothers at first childbirth has risen from 25.6 in 1970
to 30.4 in 2013, while 34.5% of women in the 30-34 age cohort and 20% in the
35-39 cohort remained unmarried in the 2010 census.10 More
Japanese women are now working compared to 1960. This is the result of
several factors: a growing demand for their labour during the post-war growth
decades, an increased social acceptance of working women, better availability
of maternity and childcare leave, changing desire and/or financial need for
women to work, delayed marriage, and lower fertility rates (which reduces the
average number of years required for early childcare). While these changes
broadly indicate that progress for working women in Japan has occurred, as
measured by rising employment curves, the depth of that progress cannot be
assumed. While more women are working in the paid economy, this has not led
to enhanced career opportunities for Japanese women. The high rates of female
non-regular employment and the significant decline in fertility both suggest
that gender and motherhood are key barriers to career employment
opportunities for women in Japan.11 A third feature of female employment is that Japanese women
participate in the workforce at significantly lower rates than Japanese men.
In 2012, around 95% of Japanese men were working compared to around 70-75% of
women. In other words, in the key productive years, some 25-30% of Japanese
women were not working in the economy compared to only 5% of Japanese men.
The M-curve of Japanese employment is notable when placed in an international
context and compared to selected countries The M-curve is a phenomenon in Japan and South Korea. In other
OECD countries there has been a clear trend towards an inverted-U pattern of
female employment during the post-war decades. Even in countries, for example
Italy, where female labour participation is relatively low, the inverted-U is
still a pattern. The lower rates of female participation and the persistence
of the M-curve (the dip in the M) signify that marriage and children are an
impediment to continuous employment for Japanese women. In fact, the labour
force participation rate for prime age (aged 25-64) Japanese women (69% in
2013) is the sixth lowest in the OECD.12 Womenomics for Japan, as prescribed by Kathy Matsui, recommends
expanding the current rate of participation of women in the workforce. There
is arguably scope to do this. Japan has an average female participation rate
of 63%, compared to 70% in China, 72% in Germany and 78% in Sweden (see
figure 3). Matsui argues that optimal increased participation of women can
boost Japan’s GDP by as much as 13-15%. However, I suggest that this
expectation and focus on growth is unrealistic as it is based on a
calculation of gender parity (if female labour participation attains the same
rate as males). This is extremely unlikely to happen since the current gender
divide in Japan acts as a strong impediment to the achievement of gender
parity. Moreover, I will argue that it is not obvious that a rise in female
employment rates within the current social context would immediately
translate into a rise in GDP, given the allocation of labour in the household
and the way in which women are currently employed. The gendered nature of regular and non-regular work There has been much attention on the increasing proportion of
non-regular and part-time workers in the Japanese economy, particularly since
the 1990s, and the issues associated with a precarious workforce.13 In
Japan there is a clear gender difference when it comes to regular versus
non-regular work (see figure 4). While 75.3% of all male employees are regular workers, only
41.9% of female employees fall into this category. Women are far more likely
than men to be employed as non-regular workers, with 58.1% of women falling
into this employment category in 2011 compared to 24.7% of men. This gender
difference is to a great extent the result of an employment culture that
prioritises regular employment for prime age men, while women are far more
likely to be allocated to non-regular employment, particularly among older
age cohorts. The emergence of the part-time worker category, and the
prominence of females in non-regular categories of employment (77% of all
non-regular workers were female in 2012), is a direct result of the 1960s
‘blueprint’ practice to utilise women as a temporary and cheap workforce
supporting core male employment. The issue of temporary or indeed precarious
employment was not viewed as an overriding problem for the Japanese economy
by political and business leaders until increasing numbers of young men began
to enter non-regular employment during the 1990s post-bubble economic years,
and arguably has limited priority within Abenomics policy. A breakdown of non-regular employment by age and gender (figure
5) shows that there has been an increase in non-regular employment for both
sexes across all age cohorts since the mid-1980s, which is not surprising
given the 1990s economic woes and moves toward deregulation of the labour
market. Not only have expectations of lifetime employment among men faded,
but large numbers of younger age cohorts of men now hold irregular and
part-time jobs (which include arubaito and freeter workers)
and in the oldest cohort (includes entrusted workers).14 However,
there is still a significant gender divide, with women much more likely than
men to be non-regular workers across all age cohorts. In fact, women are more
likely to be non-regular workers now compared with 1985, which demonstrates
an increased use of a non-regular female buffer work force. Moreover, it is
interesting to note that only 8% of male workers aged 35-54 are in
non-regular employment. This is the generation of men who came of age in the
so-called 1990s ‘ice age’ when the demise of regular employment was much
discussed in the context of the implosion of Japan’s economy. While there has
definitely been an increase in non-regular work for this age group since the
mid-1980s (while overall unemployment rates rose from 2.6% in 1985 to 4.2% in
2011),15 it certainly does not indicate that regular
employment for prime age men has dissipated to any great extent. Rather, more
than 90% of male workers in their peak productive years are in regular work.
This ongoing, and arguably increasing, gender divide in employment practice
continues to favour regular employment for men over women. The purpose of
this discussion is not to gloss over the uncertainty of employment for
younger men and women in Japan today. The higher proportion of non-regular
employment in the younger cohorts (both men and women) is of concern and need
to be closely observed for future impact. The point I wish to make is that
any solution for Japanese employment that aims to enhance gender equality
must include solutions that can not only break down the continuing gender
divide in employment but also address the uncertain nature of non-regular
work for both sexes. Precarious employment for men has only
recently been identified as a key problem in Japan, but women have long faced
this uncertainty when it comes to paid employment.
Womenomics as policy: the impact so far and the challenges to
success As noted, women have been increasing their presence in the
Japanese workforce for some decades now. On the positive side, women are a
visible and key component of the workforce, there is gender equal employment
legislation in place,16 and womenomics is finally on the
political agenda. On the negative side is the fact that the nature of women’s
work has changed little since the 1960s and there continue to be political,
institutional and social constraints that act to impede any real progress in
gender equality as measured by more than relative incomes and security. These
factors include a range of issues: Japanese workplace culture and practice,
childcare, spousal tax legislation and social attitudes toward lifetime work
and careers for women (and men). Womenomics in action: the 30% targets A key focus of Abe’s womenomics policy has been the so-called
30% targets, which aim to increase the presence of women in leadership
positions to 30% by 2020. It is important to note that the 30% targets are
not new policy initiatives. Rather, they have been a key strategy of the
Gender Equality Bureau, a division of the Japanese Cabinet Office, since its
establishment in 2001 during a shake-up of government ministries. In 2005,
the Gender Equality Bureau announced its Second Basic Plan for Gender
Equality with the aim: “to expand women’s participation in every
field so that women will have at least 30% of the leadership positions in all
fields of society by 2020”.17 In that same year,
Abe Shinzō, then Acting Secretary General of the LDP, led a conservative
campaign directly opposing the promotion of gender equality.18 Since
his election in 2012, he appears to have made a complete turnaround, now
advocating womenomics and publicly backing the 30% targets. So what has
prompted this apparent change of heart? There is certainly international pressure on Japan to improve
gender equality. According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap
Report 2013, Japan ranked 105 out of 136 countries in terms of the report’s
measurement of gender-based gaps in access to resources and opportunities by
country.19 Japan ranks high in health and educational
equality, but low in economic and political equality. It may well be causing
political embarrassment that Japan keeps slipping down the annual Gender Gap
rankings, not because Japan is not making some progress but because other
countries are making much faster progress, causing Japan to decline or at the
very least stagnate by comparison. In order to critically assess the progress
for working women and the viability of the 30% targets, an analysis of impact
thus far is required. Figure 6 shows the percentage of females in various
sectors of the economy and society, with earlier comparative data provided in
parentheses.
There has been progress for women in some sectors and a lack of
progress in others. The presence of women in the public sector has shown
rapid increase in the new millennium. The percentage of civil servants who
are women rose from 17.4% in 2003 to 28.6% in 2011, while the percentage of
women on national government advisory boards grew from 1.41% in 1995 to 32.9%
in 2011. In terms of senior positions within the civil service, however, only
2.6% of women are at leadership levels, up slightly from 1.5% in 2003. As in
other countries (e.g. the UK), the public sector is more meritocratic in
recruitment procedures than private companies with civil service entry based
on examination results. The public sector has also done better in promoting
continued employment after childbearing and encouraging men to take up
parental leave. The poor results in senior positions, however, would suggest
that even in a sector where gender equality has made progress at entry level,
and occupations such as teaching and government administrative jobs make it
possible for women to remain in regular employment tracks, the retention and
promotion of women still lags behind. In terms of female political presence,
in 2012, only 7.9% of Diet members in the lower house and 6.4% of prefectural
governors were female. In the latest election in which Abe’s government was
re-elected in December 2014 the number of women elected to the House of
Representatives increased from 38 to 45 members, which represents 9.47% of
members. If Abe’s administration serves a full four year term to the end of
2019, then a target of 30% women by 2020 is impossible. Recent scandals over
Abe’s appointment of female cabinet ministers, forcing two high profile women
ministers to resign, have also tarnished his female friendly agenda. If Abe
cannot achieve or even approach a 30% target in his own government, one can
question how serious such targets really are. The proportion of women working in professional occupations such
as law, journalism and academia has grown over the last decade, but there is
limited progress in attainment of senior positions within these professions.
For example, the percentage of female non-professorial academic staff in
Japanese universities is below 20% (compared to 46.8% in the UK), while only
14% of research academics in Japan are women (38% in the UK), and women hold
only around 5% of professorial positions in Japanese universities (19.8% in
UK).20 There does seem to be clear progress in the medical
and healthcare professions in Japan, with 18.9% of doctors, 20.8% of dentists
and 66.8% of pharmacists now female. Again, there is little indication of the
proportion of women at senior positions in these fields. With the relative
decline of the manufacturing sector, and rising healthcare needs of an aging
population, labour is increasingly required in Japan’s healthcare economy. In
Japan, women have long been deemed responsible for care-giver roles, with the
male-breadwinner model assigning primary responsibility for the care of young
and elderly family dependants to women. In line with the WEF findings, it is
above all the comparative lag in women’s equality in the political and
economic sectors of Japanese society that has not been prioritised. The low proportion of women in senior positions in corporate
Japan is the focus of the majority of criticism, and a critical focus of
Abe’s 30% targets. Although women now comprise some 25% of employees in large
enterprises and 35% in medium enterprises, the proportion of women in senior
positions in private sector enterprises in Japan remains low. According to
the Grant Thornton IBR report 2014, Japan ranks the lowest in a survey of 45
economies in terms of proportion of women in senior roles in private sector
companies. Japan has held this bottom position every year since the start of
the survey in 2004, with the current 9% attainment having only risen by 1% in
a decade from 8%.21 Abe has been keen to promote the
appointment of women to corporate boards as a key strand of his womenomics
policy. While this top-down approach may go some way to encouraging companies
to promote women into senior positions and to focus corporate minds on
achieving better diversity at the company board level, there are clear
problems of pipeline and skill impacting on this approach, with companies
citing a lack of female candidates for senior positions.22 This
is because the current workplace environment in Japan does not make it easy
for women to be identified in talent management programmes and to emerge
through the succession pipeline. The Japanese workplace: an impediment to womenomics. A crucial impediment for working women in Japan continues to be
corporate culture and employer practice, most notable in medium and large
private sector organisations. Well known aspects of this workplace culture
include: long hours, limited flexibility, status and hierarchy, long term
loyalty to the firm, and career progression based on continuous employment.
It is very difficult for both female and male workers with caring
responsibilities, particularly when faced with decisions relating to
maternity, childcare, and other caring roles (notably aging parents) within
the family, to meet the demands of Japan’s current workplace culture. Abe has
pledged to increase the number of childcare outlets, and this is certainly a
step in the right direction as childcare is an ongoing challenge for Japanese
working women. Provision of childcare facilities alone will not solve the
problem, though. Employers value length of service and continuous employment
when assessing employee performance and promotion. Those who take maternity
and childcare leave do not meet this criterion of continuous employment.
Little wonder that despite a 2008 survey suggesting that 32% of men would
like to contribute more to family life by taking childcare leave, the take-up
rate remains persistently low; only 1.9% per cent in 2012.23 This
is no doubt reflective of the risk of stepping out of performance tracks that
are assessed on continuous employment as well as a rational financial choice
for a majority of couples where the male earns the higher income. More
revealing is that despite the availability of maternity and childcare leave,
68% of Japanese women choose to quit their job upon marriage or childbirth,
resulting in the persistence of a dip that shapes the M-curve and is the
decisive first step toward women’s marginalization in future employment as
non-regular workers.24 The reasons for this are two-fold.
First, social norms continue to encourage women to shoulder the main
reproductive and caring roles within the family, with women assuming key
responsibility for housework, childcare and care of aging parents.25 Contributing
to this is a lack of early childcare places, especially in key urban areas
such as Tokyo, where nuclear households, commuting times, and geographical
distance from wider family members such as grandparents increases the
inability of working parents to combine work and childcare. An additional
pressure is the notion of sansaiji shinwa (the
three-year-old myth),26 a conventional belief that mothers
should be the ones to take care of children until the age of three, and an
ongoing pressure on mothers to be the family member committed to their
child’s development and education, for example by providing a nutritious home-made obentō lunch
daily, getting involved with PTA activities, and monitoring homework (one
facet of the kyōiku mama role).27 Second,
corporate culture not only encourages men to leave such domestic and
childcare responsibilities to women, but the focus on continuous employment
as a determinant of career and promotion opportunities makes it extremely
difficult for women to fit back into a demanding working culture after taking
childcare leave. Nor do employers expect a working mother to be able to work
as intensively and with the level of dedication of their male counterparts
(including working fathers) which is why women are side-lined from many
career enhancing training and roles. Those women who do return are encouraged
to work as non-regular workers who, as non-core workers, face fewer demands
on their loyalty and time. The opportunity costs for both women and men to break out of the
implicit constraints imposed by this gendered workplace culture are high.
Women can pursue a career, but they have to do so by either opting not to
marry and have children or restricting themselves to one child (both are key
reasons driving the declining birth-rate in Japan) and be prepared to commit
and work in the same way expected of a core male regular employee. Women who
manage to do this often cite the need for a supportive framework that is
negotiated within the family rather than any broader workplace culture of
support.28 Recent survey data also recorded that one in four
women have been a victim of maternity harassment (matahara) within the
organisation.29Arguably, Japanese men have even less opportunity
and face stronger social resistance to opt out of a secure lifetime career
track within an organisation. Moreover, those men in precarious employment
find it increasingly difficult to be able to commit to marriage and family.30 As
part of womenomics policy, Abe has proposed extending childcare leave from
one year to three years. While this might appear progressive on the surface,
in reality this will further reinforce the notion that women are responsible
for caring for children before the age of three, make it even more difficult
for men to ask for leave in a corporate culture that already frowns upon men
opting for such leave, and make it even more difficult for women to return to
the current rigidities of the workplace after a three year absence. It is not
surprising that 77% of women who re-enter employment after a break for
child-rearing do so as non-regular workers. A return to non-regular work for
working mothers offers less career opportunity, stability and pay, but does
offer the flexibility to combine work with parenting. It does not, however,
lead to a strong presence of women in the middle and senior management
cohorts in Japanese companies. Another factor that encourages a clear gender divide within the
workplace is the practice of employment management defined by career
tracking. Although the EEOL was strengthened in 1999 in an attempt to
discourage gender discrimination by tracking, around half of medium and large
companies continue to utilise a career tracking system.31 Females
accounted for only 11.6% of graduate recruits placed onto the main career
track in medium and large organisations in 2012.32 An
employment culture that discourages women entering career paths at entry
level and at key lifecycle stages such as motherhood means that conditions
are not favourable for women to rise through corporate ranks, attain middle
or senior management positions, and actively participate in the decision
making process. A common view in large Japanese companies is that it takes
twenty years to identify ‘talent’,33 at which point there are
likely to be few women who have continuously made their way up the corporate
ladder. This lack of female role models in senior positions in corporate
Japan, particularly those who have managed to combine a career and
parenthood, may even be discouraging young women to opt for regular
employment over the course of their lifecycle. The spousal tax system: an impediment to womenomics There are also significant legislative and social impediments
that discourage women from pursuing regular employment. Abe has said he will
consider a review of the current system of the spousal tax, but as yet no
action has occurred. Married women who keep their annual income under ¥1.03
million pay no income tax or social security, and their husband gets an
income tax deduction for them as a dependant. The spousal tax was established
in 1961 when there was increased labour demand for ‘housewives’ to work
part-time, while protecting their role as dependants or home-makers within
the male breadwinner model.34 This tax system is clearly
anachronistic not only from the perspective of the demographic and financial
pressures currently facing the Japanese tax and social security system, but
also from the perspective of encouraging gender equality in the workplace and
within the family unit. The number of dual income households (10.65 million
in 2013) has exceeded the number of single income households (7.45 million in
2013) since 1995.35 There is nevertheless a cluster of some
14 million married women who keep their income below the ¥1.03m yen ceiling,
and it is estimated that this costs the government ¥600 billion in potential
annual fiscal revenue in addition to the amounts provided to such households
in tax relief.36Moreover, this encourages employers to pay low
(capped) wages and offer non-regular jobs to married female employees. This
is a disincentive for women to pursue regular employment over the course of
their lifecycle, while the internal career system in Japanese elite companies
is based on regular employment.37 The spousal tax system
therefore legitimises the male breadwinner as the core workforce within the
Japanese employment system. It encourages employers to focus core
compensation packages around male breadwinner needs and cap the income of
married female employees. It also increases pressure on Japanese men. If they
wish to marry they must earn a breadwinner salary, increasingly difficult in
an environment of declining real income and increasing non-regular employment
for younger male workers. Resistance to scrapping the spousal tax arguably comes from
several quarters of society: policy makers, employers, academics and women
themselves. Scrapping the system would have to be accompanied by, and could
trigger, a complete overhaul of employer compensation packages. Resistance to
such an overhaul has centered on capital, as firms (particularly SMEs) would
face pressures to pay higher wages.38 There might well be
resistance from some Japanese women also who, unlike their male counterparts,
have long perceived benefits from a lifecycle flexibility that their role as
‘dependants’ offers. These multiple sources of resistance highlight the
complexity of implementing womenomics policy. Working women in Japan are not
a single entity. The spousal tax model assumes that a married woman is
primarily a housewife (shufu) and therefore only requires a
‘supplementary’ income, as her husband can be the primary earner. While there
are households who still fit this ‘ideal’ higher earning middle class model,
there are also increasing numbers that do not, including low income
households and those with single or divorced parents. Despite the
complexities of abolishing the spousal tax, to do so would send a clear signal
that the government is serious about dismantling a dated system that is out
of touch with the changed realities of contemporary working and family life. Current policy is fundamentally misguided. It is not simply a
matter of labour supply or demand, or how quickly an increase in working
women can translate into a potential boost in GDP. In launching womenomics,
the government is asking more Japanese women to work and encouraging those
who already work to work longer hours. The reality is that Japanese women
simply cannot and do not want to work like Japanese men are expected to do,
because they cannot slot into the current workplace environment modelled upon
core male commitment and male breadwinner needs, particularly when their
responsibilities as mothers remain intact. Womenomics in Japan does not
directly challenge this normative model, but rather urges more women to work
in the ways that have been prescribed for Japanese core male workers since
the period of high economic growth. There are many questions that this poses.
If womenomics were to achieve its aim and the female employment rate did gain
parity to that of males, how would the unpaid work currently undertaken by
women (childcare, housework and care of the elderly) be reallocated or
reevaluated? While immigrant workers have been encouraged to enter some key
sectors such as low skilled manufacturing and healthcare, Japan has thus far
refused to open its doors to allow the high levels of immigrant labour that
would be required to take up this sort of domestic or care work or indeed to
meet the overall forecasted labour shortfall.39 In order to
really achieve the benefits of female empowerment and to work towards gender
equality, there needs to be a renegotiation of gender norms across Japanese
society. Policy-makers certainly have a role to play in the renegotiation of
legislation and workplace practice in order to dismantle the barriers
outlined above. However, this ‘top-down’ approach must also be accompanied by
a ‘bottom-up’ response. Gender equality can only be advanced if employers,
educators, families and individuals (men and women) collectively opt to
implement such change. Japanese society: an impediment to womenomics? Social perception and media attention may lean toward the idea
that things have significantly changed in Japan since the early post-war
decades, but the reality is more complex. In 2012, the Cabinet Office
surveyed opinion on the statement that: “husbands should earn a living and
wives should be responsible for the home”. 51.6% agreed. For the first time
since the start of the poll, which dates to 1979, the ratio of agreement
increased over the previous poll for both male and female respondents.40 By
contrast, in 2014, another poll reported that 40% of men and women aged 20-49
years believed husbands should work full-time and wives should stay at home,
while 60% believed that wives should dedicate themselves to childcare while
children are young.41 Such survey results are at odds with
the government policy to increase the participation of women in the workforce
via womenomics. While there has been a clear shift in attitudes since the
original Cabinet poll in 1979 when 73% of respondents agreed with the
statement, the 51.6% agreement in 2012 indicates ongoing support and attachment
for a gendered division of labour particularly during the early years of
childrearing. Social attachment to ‘traditional’ gender roles is an
acknowledgement that current workplace culture makes it difficult for women
to pursue career opportunities, particularly if they wish to marry and have
children. Such barriers lead to women themselves reinforcing the expectation
of the male breadwinner. While career tracks (sōgō-shoku) in Japanese
companies are increasingly open to young women, the hardships of this track
particularly when it comes to decisions on maternity and childcare leads to a
continued desire amongst women to marry a man who has stable career
employment at a time when a declining proportion of young working men are
able to obtain stable jobs.42 Is this an attachment to core
traditional values or a fear of change? Arguably it is both. A recent survey
recorded that more women (49%) who quit their jobs do so because of ‘push’
factors (rigid work schedules and unsupportive employers) than those (32%)
who cite ‘pull’ factors (childcare-related factors).43 Japanese
women are refusing to conform to work expectations for Japanese men. Japanese
men, given the chance, might also prefer to work differently, but in the
current environment they have little choice but to seek regular employment,
particularly if they wish to find a marriage partner. The government’s
womenomics policy is not directly targeting core male employment practices in
Japanese companies, which is one factor that will limit policy success.
Womenomics will not make any real impact if it cannot challenge or inspire
women and men to give up the status quo or indeed challenge the increasingly
precarious modes of livelihood for both women and men. Gender and employment in Japan: the way forward Can womenomics offer a viable way forward for Japan? In its
current form, I would argue not. It offers at best limited solutions and
would need to go beyond its current focus on women and embrace men as well.
There are three compelling arguments for renegotiating gendered employment to
promote gender equality in Japan. First, there is the demographic argument.
Japan’s population is fast declining and aging, a trend which results in a
shrinking labour force and creates challenges in key sectors of the economy
ranging from manufacturing to healthcare. It also produces a high national
dependency ratio, with only 2.1 productive workers predicted to be supporting
each pensioner by 2025. If one of those 2.1 workers is a female part-time
worker with her income capped under the spousal tax system then there will be
in reality only one worker contributing tax and providing for each pensioner.
This is financially unsustainable. Not only does this system encourage the
setting of low wages for non-regular workers, particularly married women, but
it places the burden of tax contribution predominantly on core male regular
workers. Second, there is a strong business argument for gender equality.
Encouraging more women, including many with higher education and technical
skills, into career tracks and into middle and senior management will promote
employee diversity, and can be translated into improved corporate and
government performance, creativity and agility. Japanese companies have long
defined ‘diversity’ to encompass women and, more recently, non-Japanese
employees, but diversity policy must also be extended to include Japanese
men. Male workers have long been viewed as one core group of workers with no
acknowledgement that they may have diverse aspirations, needs or flexibility.
They are not differentiated in Japan, as women have been since the 1960s, into
various categories of employees. Japanese companies need to move away from
the 1990s ‘lost decade’ view that the best way to restructure labour is to
utilise secondary tracks of cheap non-regular workers in order to protect
core male employee tracks. This is an approach to employee management that
has focused on cost at the expense of talent and contributed to the growing
ranks of the precariat in the Japanese labour force over the last twenty
years. The third argument is one of social justice, specifically an aim to
ensure that access to opportunities and privileges within a society are fully
available regardless of gender. Policy and action in Japan therefore needs to
not only (re)balance the position of women in employment and society, but
also address the needs of men too. There are a range of solutions going
forward that could be implemented in order to achieve this in Japan. Progress toward womenomics requires the Abe government to move
beyond rhetoric to action. A review of the spousal tax should be undertaken,
with low income households compensated in some way, but the tax breaks
scrapped for higher income households. A clear signal needs to be sent to
employers that it is no longer acceptable to regard non-regular work as
cheap, or to cap the income of women as married dependants. This would also
send a message to women that, if they opt to work in the paid economy, they
will be treated equally, their work will be valued by the market, and they
must make tax contributions. Employment legislation can also be tightened to
promote gender equality, particularly with regard to recruitment and
childcare. Japanese women are well educated, outperforming men on average at
university, but even when recruited into career tracks in Japanese companies
the ability for them to remain following marriage and childbirth is
problematic. Recognizing that the 30% target for female leadership in the
private sector by 2020 is unattainable, the government has revised the target
sharply to just 10%. Thirty years since Japan’s equal employment legislation
(EEOL, 1986) when companies began to recruit female university graduates into
career tracks, current rates of women in leadership positions remain low.
Setting rigorous gender-balanced recruitment targets at entry level (e.g. for
large companies) could help to advance gender diversity at the leadership
level. But there needs to be investment in female employees along the career
track and strong encouragement for women to return to main stream jobs
without penalties after maternity and childcare leave. There is scope to
strengthen the existing Japanese legislation. The UK offers a good example.
Current UK legislation stipulates that upon return from maternity leave women
have the right to the same or a similar job, with the same or better terms
and conditions of employment. This is currently not the case in Japan where
women who return to work after maternity leave and child care find themselves
permanently marginalized in part-time positions. In addition, from April 2015
the UK will extend leave to both sexes, so that working couples can share
paid parental leave during the first 12 months of childcare. Policy can send
a signal to Japanese men that they are responsible for childcare, too.
Japanese men are currently discouraged from taking childcare leave by the
nature of the corporate culture and by the limited corporate and state
financial and social incentives to do so. Providing better paid statutory
leave and even going so far as to make an initial period of parental leave
mandatory for working fathers could ensure the ikumen (men
who do childcare) policy has actual substance.44 Legislation and policy can, however, only go so far. Any real
drive for change must come from institutions, from business, and from
society. Employers appear to be a major source of resistance. Since the late
1980s, the more Japanese policy seems to strive toward gender equality, the
more employers’ implementation of policy has served to differentiate the
management of male and female employees, even widening the gap between the
sexes. Abe’s womenomics is not viable because it expects women to slot into
and in many ways continues to support the current male-focused workplace
culture in Japan. There is a need to break down rigidity as well as nurture
flexibility. Japanese employment can be loosened to encourage work-life
balance, mobility and flexibility, and opportunities for both men and women
to flex their career and share childcare at key stages of the lifecycle. This
would require performance management to be result-oriented, and a curtailment
of the inefficiency and barriers to working parents inherent within the long
hours culture. Talent could be fast-tracked and gender-equal, with employee
engagement and diversity strategies identifying individual employee
aspirations, skills and work-life balance needs. Japanese employees,
particularly men, are managed as group cohorts within a sempai-kohai hierarchy,
but fostering competent and engaged employees requires abandoning the ‘one
size fits all’ mentality.45 A workplace sub-culture of
harassment also needs to be confronted, notably the practices of maternity
harassment, stigmatisation of men who want to take childcare leave, the
conscious allocation of non-career roles and responsibilities to women, and
the status and stability distinctions between regular and non-regular
employees. These approaches have proven to be effective in advancing gender
equality in other countries. It is also important to note that ushering in
elements of best-practice global or ‘western’ human resource management does
not mean that local or Japanese strengths have to be completely abandoned.
Rather, core Japanese elements such as corporate loyalty and citizenship,
commitment to investment in employee training and careers, and a priority for
employee security before corporate profits can be extended to encompass
female and non-regular employees. The balance sheets of many Japanese
companies have recovered since the 1990s, and under Abenomics they are being
encouraged to invest their profits and expand to help drive Japanese economic
growth. However, much of this investment is targeted abroad and they must be
encouraged to also invest and re-structure employment domestically in order
to foster talent and relieve the employment precarity that has been created
under economic stagnation. A kaizen focused employee
management culture that continually scrutinises and adapts to individual and
diverse employee competencies and needs could be a way forward.46 Such
solutions may, however, prove to be difficult to implement, not because it is
problematic to design policy and processes for their delivery, but because
they rely on the commitment of management and the engagement and willingness
of employees. They cannot simply be forced through via legal obligation, but
require encouragement as a proactive and transparent process of positive
change. In other words, they require a change of both corporate and social
mentality to foster gender equality and wellbeing, and create increased
opportunities and social justice for both men and women. Conclusion At present, in spite of the increasingly complex reality of
work, the model that continues to underpin the Japanese employment system is
the male breadwinner-female dependent model. This has led to the entrenchment
of gender segregated employment that is modelled on ‘conventional’ Japanese
gender norms and perpetuated in business, society and in popular culture.47 Unless
that model is dismantled, then progress for women in Japan will be only
incremental at best and they will continue to predominantly work as a
mainstay buffer force supporting an ideal of core male regular employment.
Japan may continue to favour this system. However, unless there is progress
for women, there will be no progress for men, who will remain constrained by
regular, continuous employment with little work-life balance and little
recourse for renegotiation of their role in the family. Gender equality may
disrupt to some extent the stability and privilege of elite male employment. It
may also disrupt the current flexibility that Japanese women might be deemed
to have in terms of their lifecycle choices (e.g. to work or not to work)
compared to Japanese men. However, a new competitive model of employment can
bring about enhanced business agility, social choice, opportunity and
wellbeing for both sexes. The lingering ideal of the malesalaryman and
the female shufu (housewife) is now hugely disconnected from
social realities, but remains as an ideal because the alternative – the
renegotiation of men, women, work and childcare – is complex. This is true
not just in Japan, but in any society, even in a country such as Sweden which
is often cited as a model of advanced progress in gender equality. The
complexity of change is also potentially jarring of social expectations,
particularly the expectations of the core cohort of men in their prime
working years in regular employment in Japan. However, the reality is that an
increasing proportion of workers (women and young men) fall outside of a system
that aims to secure this ‘ideal’ core. This model needs to be abandoned.
Employment needs to embrace diversity and flexibility while reducing
precariousness, and seek to promote sustainability, wellbeing and equality
for both sexes. This very renegotiation of gender norms is the only viable
way forward for Japan. Dr Helen Macnaughtan is Senior Lecturer in International
Business and Management (Japan) at SOAS, University of London and Co-editor
of Japan Forum, the official journal of the British Association for Japanese
Studies (BAJS). Recommended citation: Helen Macnaughtan,
"Womenomics for Japan: is the Abe policy for gendered employment viable
in an era of precarity?", The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13,
Issue 12, No. 1, March 30, 2015. |