Globalisation and Women in the Japanese Workforce contributes to the debate about the impact of globalisation upon women. It examines the effect of restructuring upon women's employment in Japan and describes the actions women are taking individually and collectively to campaign for change in their working environment and the laws and practices regulating it.

Globalisation and Women in the Japanese Workforce contributes to the debate about the impact of globalisation upon women. It examines the effect of restructuring upon women's employment in Japan and describes the actions women are taking individually and collectively to campaign for change in their working environment and the laws and practices regulating it.

Since Japan’s economic recession began in the 1990s, the female workforce has experienced revolutionary changes as greater numbers of women have sought to establish careers. Employment trends indicate that increasingly white-collar professional women are succeeding in breaking through the "glass ceiling", as digital technologies blur and redefine work in spatial, gendered, and ideological terms. This book examines what motivates Japanese women to pursue professional careers in the contemporary neoliberal economy, and how they reconfigure notions of selfhood while doing so. It analyses how professional women contest conventional notions of femininity in contemporary Japan and in turn, negotiate new gender roles and cultural assumptions about women, whilst reorganizing the Japanese workplace and wider socio-economic relationships. Further, the book explores how professional women create new social identities through the mutual conditioning of structure and self, and asks how women come to understand their experiences; how their actions change the gendering of the workforce; and how their lives shape the economic, political, social, and cultural landscapes of this post-industrial nation. Based on extensive fieldwork, Career Women in Contemporary Japan will have broad appeal across a range of disciplines including Japanese culture and society, gender and family studies, women’s studies, anthropology, ethnology and sociology.

This volume applies a gender-sensitive perspective on Japan, discussing issues such as national identity, the changing appeal of role models, legacies of a misogynous past, gendered education policies, female imaging in the media, or working women's networks. The transnational dimension of this perspective is highlighted by comparisons drawn between Japan and other countries of the region such as Philippines and South Korea. Authors attend to concepts of gender and gendered identities as well as to actors within gendered spaces of society.

This book contributes to the debate about the impact of globalisation upon women and examines the impact of restructuring upon women's employment in Japan.

The number of women in positions of power and authority in Japanese companies has remained small despite the increase in the number of educated women and the passage of legislation on gender equality. In Too Few Women at the Top, Kumiko Nemoto draws on theoretical insights regarding Japan’s coordinated capitalism and institutional stasis to challenge claims that the surge in women’s education and employment will logically lead to the decline of gender inequality and eventually improve women’s status in the Japanese workplace. Nemoto’s interviews with diverse groups of workers at three Japanese financial companies and two cosmetics companies in Tokyo reveal the persistence of vertical sex segregation as a cost-saving measure by Japanese companies. Women’s advancement is impeded by customs including seniority pay and promotion, track-based hiring of women, long working hours, and the absence of women leaders. Nemoto contends that an improvement in gender equality in the corporate system will require that Japan fundamentally depart from its postwar methods of business management. Only when the static labor market is revitalized through adoption of new systems of cost savings, employee hiring, and rewards will Japanese women advance in their chosen professions. Comparison with the situation in the United States makes the author’s analysis of the Japanese case relevant for understanding the dynamics of the glass ceiling in U.S. workplaces as well.

Globalization demands that more employees become comfortable working outside their home country borders. Western Women Working in Japan is a research-based description of the work and living situations facing foreign professional women who work in Japan. The book draws upon detailed survey data and in-depth interviews, as well as the experiences of the authors, who have lived or worked in Japan during the last 20 years. It examines how foreign women can succeed in Japanese and foreign firms operating in Japan by describing what helps these Western women adjust to Japan and work with Japanese bosses, subordinates, and clients. These women face some different problems than men, yet are armed with special advantages. Drawing upon past research and exploring in new directions, the authors examine the connection between women's job success and the quality of their work relationships with the Japanese, their autonomy, Japanese linguistic ability, and age. Their working relationships are also compared to male expatriates and to the women's previous jobs. The interviews provide new insights into the sexual bias and harassment they encountered and how they dealt with these issues. The book includes valuable recommendations in the areas of selection, training, support, and repatriation for both the organizations that employ foreign women in their Japanese operations and for the women themselves.