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.

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Part-time workers are normally employed for six months or a year. They are paid on an hourly basis and are sometimes paid less than their male counterparts. They do not have paid vacation or allowances to support pensions.

Women made up about 89 percent of Japan's 8 million part-time workers in 2009, according to the Health, Welfare and Labor Ministry.

The peak of unemployment in Japan was 5.4 percent in the third quarter of 2009, according to the International Labor Office G20 Statistical Update. In 2007 the unemployment rate stood at 3.7 percent.

Still Making Coffee

Mikiko Kamura, 33, quit a job in the personnel department of an electric appliance company after three years, citing a burdensome work culture for women.

"At the office, in addition to a lot of paper work, usually women had to support men by making coffee, arranging tickets for business trips, answering phone calls, making photocopies, etc," she said.

It was standard practice at the company for female employees to quit if they got married or had children. Kamura recently got married and is thinking about her future. If she gets pregnant she would like to take maternity leave and return to her current job as an event planner. But in Japan it's not that easy.

"In Japan, hiring babysitters like Americans is not common. Plus we don't have enough facilities like nursery schools or day care centers," she said. Some of her friend's babies are on waiting lists.

Japan's birth rate has been decreasing, though the government is trying to change that trend.

"The leading Democratic Party in Japan decided to distribute child monthly allowances to families with children, which encourages fathers and mothers to have more children," Kamura said.

Setting up good facilities with reliable day care systems and staff for children is what young parents really need, she added.

Twenty-eight-year-old Taisuke Yamamura, a fitness trainer, says when he gets married he would like his wife to stay at home and take care of the household. But it will depend if he makes enough money to support a family.

"If my wife wanted to work, I would respect what she thinks," he said. "I can't force her to stay at home."

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Catherine Makino is based in Tokyo and has written for national and international publications, including the Los Angeles Times, Inter Press Service, the San Francisco Chronicle, Asia Times, Asian Wall Street Journal and many others.