Career Ladder for Japan's 'New' Women Still Tilted

By Catherine Makino

WeNews correspondent

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Married or single? Working full-time or part-time? Earning high or low? A few decades ago, Japanese women rarely attended university. But more choices and economic pressure have brought new polarities to their expectations.

japan office TOKYO (WOMENSENEWS)--Tanako Nakayama, a 61-year-old librarian, says that when she was young, woman rarely went to college.

If they graduated, they became teachers or telephone operators. Single women in their 30s were called "loser dogs."

"I was one of the few special women who went on to university," Nakayama said. "After I graduated, I worked as a teacher in a private school owned by a big company. There was a lot of discrimination between men and women. Women could never become managers or section chiefs."

In the 1980s women still mainly studied how to be a good wives, she said. They learned cooking, tea ceremony and flower arrangement. "Nowadays it's a lot better: Instead of just learning to be good wives, young women go to sports clubs."

These choices, however, aren't evenly distributed or enjoyed, argues Toshiaki Tachibanaki, an economist and author of the attention-getting book here, "The New Paradox for Japanese Women: Greater Choice, Greater Inequalities." The book was published in English by International House of Japan in 2010, after a Japanese-language release in 2008 by the publisher Tokyo Keizai.

In his book, Tachibanaki asserts women now have more choices in their careers--they can work full-time, part-time or at home. But Japan's long economic downturn, along with new opportunities for girls and women, have brought growing disparities and widening inequalities among women in Japanese society.

Daughters' Education Sacrificed

"Before Japan became affluent, many families sent their sons to university even if it was a financial strain on the family, but they educated their daughters only through high school or, at most, junior college," Tachibanaki said in a recent interview. "Families sacrificed their daughters' education for that of their sons. This was mostly true for women who are now in their 40s and 50s."

But as this changed, and as girls moved into universities and the work force, numerous new gaps formed among them.

Chizuko Ueno, a professor of sociology at the University of Tokyo and a leading women's studies scholar, agrees that economic insecurities have broken women into more distinct groups based on their own employment as well as that of their husbands. Today more than half of married women work and full-time housewives constitute less than one-third of married women, she says.

Women working for pay don't necessarily do it by choice, added Ueno, who sees the gap between full-time homemakers and working women often explained by their husbands' incomes.

"Many housewives don't work because they don't need to, but the latter work because they need a supplementary income," she said.

Another big gap that separates Japanese women is working part time or full time.

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