Women in the Japanese workplace 9780948096181, 9780948096198

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Women in the Japanese workplace

Womeninthe | Japanese workplace

Mary Saso

London |

Hilary Shipman

© Mary Saso 1990 Publication of this book has been assisted by a grant from the Japan Foundation. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First published 1990 by

Hilary Shipman Limited 19 Framfield Road Highbury

London N5 1UU ,

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Saso, Mary Women in the Japanese workplace. 1. Title

331’ .4

ISBN 0-948096-18-7

0-948096-19-5 | ,

Cover design by David Bennett Calligraphy by Tsugiko Saso

Typeset by Florencetype Ltd, Kewstoke, Avon Printed and bound by Biddles Limited Guildford & King’s Lynn

Contents

List of figures and tables 1V

Foreword Vil Introduction XV

, British Isles 1

Chapter 1 | Setting the scene in Japan and the

2 | Women’s working patterns in Japan 23

women 51

3 | Aspects of segregation for working

4 | Economic versus social pressures 86 5S | Working women and their families 116

6 | Working options for mothers 143

Ireland 171

7 | Japanese companies in Britain and

and Japan | 197 forwomen | 224

8 | On the shop floor in Ireland, Britain

9 Implications of Japanese employment

women 249 Bibliography 270

10 | Post-industrial employment for

Appendix 277

Index 282 ii

Figures and tables

Figures

1.1 Female labour force participation rates by

age — Ireland, Japan and the UK 5

2.1 Changes in Japanese women’s life cycle 40 2.2 Trends in distribution of Japanese women

employees by length of service 47

4.1 ‘Men should be at work; women should be

at home’ — Japan | 97 6.1 Number of part-time working women in Japan 149 Tables

Japan and the UK , 4 1.2 Labour force composition — Britain and Japan 7 1.1 Female labour force participation rates — Ireland, 1.3 Women’s average earnings as a percentage of

men’s — Britain and Japan 11

1.4 Range of earnings and medians -— Britainand Japan 13

2.1 Japanese women: status of employment 30 2.2 Changes in Japanese women’s economic activity

rate by age and over time | 32

Japanese women 34

2.3 Participation rates for selected cohorts of

2.4 Trends in proportions of Japanese working

women between main sectors 44

by occupation | 37

3.1 Trends in ratio of Japanese female employees |

IV

Figures and tables

Japan and the UK 59

3.2 Distribution of working women by industry —

3.3 Wage differentials in Japan by age and education 70 3.4 Wage differentials for mid-career recruits in

Japan by age and education 71

4.1 Why Japanese women opt to work as part-timers 95 4.2 Why women are working in Japanese and

British electronics companies 96

4.3 Views of when women should stay at home —

international comparison 99

4.4 Labour force status of the population in

Ireland, Japan and the UK 104

5.1 Child-care leave provisions in Japanese companies 128 5.2 Use of time by working women, men and

housewives — Britain and Japan 137

5.3 Degree of satisfaction with time available for family among women and men in Japanese and

British electronics companies 139

6.1 Part-time workers as a proportion of all

employees — Ireland, Japan and the UK 147 6.2 Contribution of part-time employment to cumulative growth of female employment -— Ireland,

Japan and the UK 147

6.3 Average hours worked per week by self-

employed females — Ireland, Japan and the UK 166 9.1 Worker attitudes in British and in Japanese

electronics companies 233

Vv

Foreword

Exceptional non-mommy-track careerist desired by DWCM, 56, Yale, Harvard degrees, who’s stable, decent, optimistic,

happy, athletic, fit, amusing, spiritual, pro-feminist and supportive... It is likely, Mary Saso makes clear, to be a long time before

Japan has large numbers of pro-feminist, supportive equivalents of this immodest DWCM (who, I should explain

to those unaccustomed to the code language of the New York Review of Books personal columns, is a divorced, white, Christian — read ‘non-Jewish’ — male). Nor does Japan have a lot of non-mommy-track careerist women — i.e., women who have consciously opted either not to have children or at least not to give time to mothering on a scale

which would materially affect their chances in career competition with men. There are already some such to be

found, especially in the public sector — in education, medicine, central and local government administration —

and also in the research and development (R and D) departments (rarely in any other department) of private corporations. Their numbers are increasing, and the likelihood of their actually getting career advancement — actually

becoming headmistresses and hospital managers and laboratory directors — is, if only glacially, improving.

But it is clear that Mary Saso would join those American women who object vigorously to the whole concept of an institutionalized division between mommy-track careers and severely-reduced-mothering careers. She would prefer — what she describes as ‘rational’ in Chapter 10 — a world in which we all take more of our potential affluence in the form Vil

Foreword

of increased leisure, so that parenting can become shared parenting for both men and women. The time it consumes would be taken from the hours otherwise spent playing golf or decorating the house or collecting stamps, not out of time

claimed by the workplace (or home workstation), where men and women could then at last compete on an equal footing. They could make not just dual career families, but dual parent families too, as she neatly puts it. Japanese men may not be very good at doing the laundry, but they are often quite enthusiastic about playing with their children, she says, so we are not without hope. If, indeed,

Japan were to be a pioneer in this regard, that would be good news for Japan’s worried competitors. But it doesn’t seem likely. Everywhere one looks in the advanced industrial

countries, the story seems to be the same. International competition is intensifying with the cheapening of communi-

cations and transport. Every nation is obsessed with its ‘competitiveness’. At the same time, a higher proportion of the jobs that survive — or are created by — the development of technology, are responsible and intellectually non-trivial jobs capable of giving intrinsic satisfaction. And as corporations. increasingly complain about not being able to get enough people bright enough to do those jobs well, there is increasing pressure on. those who can. Hence, at present,

there are more signs of Japanese male corporate workaholism spreading — first to co-opted Japanese women and then to the middle classes of other countries — than of Japan

coming to appreciate the pleasures of what is still in that

home-ism’). , | a

country somewhat disparagingly called maihomu-shugi (‘my

And, of course, dedicated workaholism in Japan has very

special implications for the relation between the sexes because of the Japanese employment system. ‘Equal pay for equal work’ is hardly a useful rallying cry for women when the whole pay system is based on incremental-scale career wages, not payment for job functions, so that a 25year-old man with seven years’ service and a 45-year-old

man with 27 could be doing the same job but be paid a Vill

Foreword

widely different wage. In the circumstances it was sensible that the 1986 Equal Employment Opportunity Law did not bother reiterating the (pretty empty) equal pay provisions of the post-war Labour Standards Law, but concentrated, instead, on promotion opportunities — on provisions which were aimed to secure that women should be put on the same career tracks and enjoy the same career wage trajectories as men.

Provisions which, however, were purely exhortatory were not reinforced by any penal provisions and, Mary Saso shows, seem to have had very little effect on actual practice, particularly in the private sector. The consequence is that

the male-female wage differentials, which she analyses carefully — with due allowance for all the statistical quirks and pitfalls which beset this kind of exercise — remain larger in Japan than elsewhere. And, reflecting the nature of the

large corporation employment system the spheres of women’s employment remain highly segregated; there remains a good deal of work on family farms and in other commercial and manufacturing family enterprises — for the most part not separate from the family residence; about a quarter of the total work-force in fact. Then there is the ‘office lady’ work for junior-college graduates, and shopfloor or counter-side work for high-school graduates, in the larger

‘permanent employment’ organizations. They are on incre-

mental scales made to look like those of men, but their ‘career’ is expected to end with marriage or the birth of their

first child, and there is very little alternative provision for

those who choose not to marry or to remain childless. Finally, and of increasing numerical importance, there is the wide range of jobs offered in the secondary labour market, very largely paid at rate-for-the-job market rates, or at most

on very gently sloping age-wage scales, a lot of them, especially in the large firms, part-time jobs — though parttime can mean up to 35 hours a week. What this segmented pattern actually means in terms of

options and opportunities for individual women is well brought out by the statistical comparison between Japan and 1X

Foreword , Britain which the book deploys. The author believes, as I confess I do not, all those influential people in Japan who say that the Japanese large-corporation ‘lifetime employment

system’ is going to change. If it does, as she suggests, the likelihood is that British and Japanese patterns will converge, since there seems to be very little fundamental difference in

countries. |

attitudes to work and to motherhood between the two Mary Saso is what I would call a Stage I feminist. That is

to say that she will allow the possibility that personality differences partly explain why few women in the factories

she studied were appointed as supervisors, and does not insist, as a Stage II femimist would, that it is all the result of oppressive male conspiracies, albeit sometimes covered with

a veneer of crocodile concern expressed in schemes of maternity leave and paternity leave, workplace child-care

facilities and the rest. But she will not allow even the theoretical possibility that in either the British or the Japanese population (she doesn’t talk about other gene pools) these personality differences might have some physiological base and not be solely the result of cultural conditioning. That to me is a bit of a limitation, and her lack of agnostic curiosity on that score prevents her from telling us what (if anything) Japanese psychologists are discovering about the roots of gender differences. But, unlike most feminists of either stage of commitment, she is not disproportionately preoccupied with the problems of that minority of women who are qualified for, and seek, professional careers, either on the mommy-track or off it. Her fieldwork, which she presents in a fresh and lively way, was concerned mostly with women in manual jobs - in jobs,

anyway, whether clerical or manual, that do not require a lengthy training, and where interruption for some years of child-rearing has only nominal seniority-score implications

for career advancement, and very few implications for substantive work ability, or for cumulated experiential wisdom, or for cumulated work achievement. Instead of concentrating on the ‘typical’ British and the ‘typical’

x|

Foreword

Japanese workplace, she has the interesting idea of comparing Japanese, Irish, Welsh and English women all under different forms of Japanese management. She offers a

lot of arresting detail, about wages and job tenures, about training, about union involvement and about attitudes — with sidelong glances at the wider problems of Japanese investment in the United Kingdom, and at the reasons why British men are less happy under Japanese management than British women. But for me the most striking of her

observations was that British women seem to get more positive satisfaction out of the work itself, and find more positive enjoyment in the work environment, than Japanese women doing comparable jobs in Japan.

Altogether a fascinating book, and one to be wholly recommended not only for the wealth of information which it contains, but also for the decent and humane values which inform the author’s judgements.

Director |

Ronald Dore

Japan-Europe Industry Research Centre Imperial College, London

, x1

Acknowledgements

Because I am one of the band of women working freelance, often as a homeworker, I am indebted to family members

who have encouraged me, supported me and given me practical assistance. My husband, Hiroo Saso, has not only entertained and taken over a lot of the care of the children, but also translated my questionnaires into Japanese and at the same time suggested additional questions and lines of

inquiry. While I was visiting companies in Britain and Ireland, my parents, Pat and Margaret Sellars, took the children under their care and encouraged me to devote more time to research. The examples of my working mother and also my mother-in-law, who is a self-employed teacher of

calligraphy, first clearly showed me that working women were not at all a phenomenon characteristic of those with few family responsibilities or of the West. I have benefited from discussions with researchers in the

field of Japanese labour, notably Machiko Osawa, Kazuo Koike and Marga Clegg. Their comments and advice along with those of staff at the Japan Institute of Labour have supplemented the academic angle. Hiromi Asano as a public servant in the Ministry of Labour is expected to work long hours, but she gave me her time to find out how particular

statistical series were defined and to iron out apparent discrepancies in the data as well as supplying me with a mound of relevant material on legislation and surveys. I

would not have been as aware of the difficulties faced by British working mothers without the information and thoughtful comments provided by Cilla Farquhar. Susan Yamada took a critical look at the text and pointed out many

Xi

Acknowledgements

of the ambiguities and infelicitous expressions. And the editors — Hilary Macaskill and Michael Shipman — were not

content merely to revise and approve, but gave me plenty of encouragement at each stage. Staff at Denki Roren (Japanese Federation of Electrical Machine Workers’ Unions) introduced me to Japanese trade union policies on women and gave me plenty of background material. Material and advice were also willingly supplied by the staff of the national development agencies concerned with informing prospective Japanese investors about Ireland and Wales; in particular Richard Ryan gave me important information, which corrected some common misconceptions

about Ireland’s investment climate. I am grateful to the employees of NEC Corporation and of Matsushita Electric Company, in Japan, Ireland and Wales, who never displayed any tedium, despite my persistent enquiries and requests to observe work on the shop floor. Most of all, I cannot forget

all those working women who frankly responded to my questions and expressed support for my work.

XIV

Introduction ®

Ever since Japan came to the attention of the West in the middle of the nineteenth century, there has been a tendency among both Japanese and overseas observers to focus on what appears to be quaint to Western eyes. This tendency

has been particularly evident in the case of studies of Japanese working women. We have heard a lot about the long apprenticeship of geisha and about the tea-pouring

careers of ‘office ladies’. While quaint stereotypes are interesting to read about and convenient to judge, they are neither enlightening nor helpful when any wider implications

are to be considered. ,

The sorts of implications which are the concern of this book fall into two main categories. The ways in which the treatment of working women is changing and their response to those changes within Japan provide an important example of the extent to which women are -— or are not — integrated into industrial and post-industrial societies. The other main implication concerns the way in which Japanese manufacturing facilities locating in Europe may transfer overseas their employment practices with respect to women. By and large

Japanese manufacturers overseas, apart from car and power-shovel factories, are mostly employing women on the shop floor. The assembling of televisions, integrated circuits

and other types of electronic goods provides employment predominantly for women.

In attempting to avoid the quaintness trap —- often unfortunately set by diligent sociologists and social anthropologists — I have employed various devices, which in their

own way may be just as guilty of manipulation. At the XV

Introduction

outset, therefore, I will outline my approach here so that it

may be assessed before the results appear. 7 The first simple principle involved was to use comparisons whenever possible. There is little justification in bemoaning the subordinate position of Japanese women in the workplace without finding out how British and Irish women are treated

in similar circumstances. Another principle was not to rely

only on dry data, but to see how the statistics related to actual cases of working women. In studying individual workers, however, an unavoidable bias became evident. Unless a large-scale survey is undertaken with a randomly selected sample of the population being compulsorily interviewed, those relatively few women who agree to be interviewed by an author working on her own are almost inevitably unrepresentative. And when the Japanese woman

is confronted with a foreign interviewer (even one who speaks Japanese), she may be inclined, perhaps culturally, towards giving the answers she believes are being sought. I tried to mitigate this bias in two ways, neither of which may have been wholly effective. Rather than only relying on

introductions to potential interviewees through friends, I also sought the impersonal assistance of personnel officers to select employees for interviews, which of course does mean

that another sort of bias was introduced. Secondly, in order to avoid the possible tendency of a small-scale interviewer

asking leading questions and perhaps seeking titillating information, I based the interviews on a questionnaire.

Ideally there should be a good balance of both open response questions and those with answers to be selected. The latter allow a better and more systematic comparison to be made, but the former may reveal more honest and revealing responses. There are, however, many pitfalls associated

with carrying out such opinion surveys, because of the impossibility of obtaining exact translations of each question and their interpretation in different cultures. The question-

naires which I compiled, therefore, have not been used to make quantified comparisons between the working conditions and attitudes of Japanese, British and Irish women. XVI

Introduction

Because those I interviewed were not selected by any Statistically respectable sampling method — their respectability may instead be enhanced by being known as ‘case studies’ — I have had to rely on officially produced statistical series to confirm or make overall judgements. The result may not be as picturesque as in those studies generating their own data, but the size of my samples, apart from their

non-respectability, did not permit me to provide any conclusive evidence without resorting to other sources.

Fven though I have confined my subject to working women, the sources across Japan, Britain and Ireland from

which I could get information and the possible topics of interest are numerous. Therefore I have had to place limits on what I should discuss in the light of the concerns of those reading this book. The potential readership belongs to two

main groups: those who are interested in the personnel practices of overseas Japanese manufacturing plants and those who are concerned about the role of working women

in an industrialized country. The latter topic inevitably extends to an examination of how women and men can integrate their working lives with child-rearing. What I found hopeful was that the post-industrial society in both Japan and the West could offer more scope for resolving this important issue of integrating economic and social roles. After all that I have written above about avoiding the trap of taking a quaint look at Japanese working women, I now wish to quote what appears to be a quaint example of how the Japanese themselves — or at least the powers that be —

view working women. In June 1988, the Ministry of Education, during its regular screening of proposed textbooks for schools, instructed that a passage dealing with

working conditions for women should be revised. The original reference, which said that working hours should be

shortened in order to improve working conditions for women, was deleted; and in its place was inserted the following: ‘If women are to continue to work on equal terms with men, women’s self-awakening is required in such fields as work morale and ethics.’ (The Japan Times, 1 July 1988) XV

Introduction : The original passage was a fairly innocuous suggestion which merely recognized the fact that, in the face of the long working hours taken on by Japanese workaholics, women

with the additional burden of household and family tasks find it wellnigh impossible to work on equal terms with men. The revision is a far more loaded piece of prose in which it is

presumed that a woman does already work on equal terms with a man and that, if she does not, the failure is only due to her own lack of work consciousness. Thus this example of how men view working women is not merely quaint, but actually very alarming. One of the tasks of this book will be to demonstrate how mistaken is this official view. That task

has already been begun by women in Japan such as the Hataraku Fujin no Kai (an organisation for middle-aged working women), whose 1987 survey results gathered in Obasan wa Okota-zo (We’re Really Angry) show that Japanese women are neither passive nor unaware that they cannot work on equal terms with men. The translation of one short passage (p.280) will be sufficient to demonstrate their awareness and their strong will: Looking from the bottom of present-day society we can easily

see how its structure has a design full of contradictions and discrimination, within which women are ingeniously contained. _ Whatever changes occur, we want in our lives to take pride in

our determination to see and speak about society, even from the lowliest perspective. The working women’s association has been in action for 20 years to seek the realization of truly equal

opportunities for women and men in society and we shall steadily continue on that path, since our greatest wish is to focus the power of middle-aged working women in changing society.

| XVill

] | Setting the scene in Japan and the British Isles Two similar, but contrasting, scenes of women at work are particularly vivid in my mind. The stage for both scenes is an NEC - ‘computers and communications’ — plant. The much larger plant (Tamagawa) is surrounded by railway lines in the highly industrialized city of Kawasaki, which is squashed between Tokyo and Yokohama; the smaller one (Ballivor)

lies incongruously in a rather remote Irish village. Even though the locations are so different in character many of the young Japanese women at NEC’s Tamagawa plant are originally from rural areas, but now they live in company dormitories, whereas their Irish counterparts continue to live on family-run farms in sparsely populated County Meath. Most of the young Japanese women only expect to work at NEC for half a dozen years, whereas the Irish women in NEC’s Ballivor plant do not intend to give up their employment with NEC so quickly.

On the shop floor in the two plants it would be hard to distinguish between the Japanese women and the Irish

women; they are all peering through microscopes and operating similar machines for the production of integrated

circuits. Their space-age balaclavas and coveralls are identical, but are their attitudes and expectations at all similar? Why do the Japanese women working at NEC appear to be less attached to the labour force? What is their

view of paid work compared to that of Irish and British women working at Japanese factories? Do they all have

job security, training and promotion opportunities to compensate for their highly disciplined work environment? Are the young Japanese women at NEC representative of all

i

Setting the scene

Japanese working women? And how do work patterns for Japanese women differ from those for their Irish and British counterparts? These are just a handful of the issues which

will be considered in this book. First, though, in order to begin to answer the last comparative question I shall examine the position of all women in the labour force in both Japan and Britain, with some comments about Ireland insofar as the participation patterns there differ from

Britain. |

The subjective view Whenever anything is written in general about. Japanese women and work, the following approach is popular. First, there are expressions of outrage both because the average wage differential by sex is so wide and also, ironically, because women apparently choose to stay at home rather

than seek poorly paid employment. And there is the comforting conclusion that in this respect Japan is 20 years

behind the West, but it is slowly catching up. This glib approach seems to suggest both a slightly superior smugness on the part of Western commentators and also an assurance that employment conditions for women can only continue to improve. But such complacent conclusions rest mostly on subjective impressions of progress. Even when bits of data

are thrown in for support of the contention that the more

women are working the more they are emancipated, agreement would be foolhardy without first checking both the long-term trends and the conditions under which women are working. In trying to avoid the dangers of a subjective approach, therefore, I shall begin by examining comprehensive data and legislation both to make comparisons between Japan and the British Isles and also to see whether there have been

any real changes over time. Even the use of hard data, however, requires some subjective judgements, because often the definitions used in collecting the data are not 2

Setting the scene

compatible; and even the simplest measures may sometimes show great variety depending on the source. A great deal of caution is needed, therefore, in making a direct comparison

between countries. Still it should be possible to come to some conclusions about overall trends, which in the following chapters will be examined in more detail and assessed with respect to the lives of individual working women. Ultimately I intend to judge whether the trends and attitudes concerning women working are converging

between Japan and the West and whether the overall direction is one of improvement. And I shall be considering

the implications, in particular, for women _ shop-floor workers of Japanese companies in Britain and Ireland.

Participation in the labour market Whether a woman has some kind of job or else is registered as unemployed, her willingness to engage in remunerative work — as opposed to the demanding, but unpaid, domestic

labour of child care and housework — is shown by her participation in the labour force. I shall begin, therefore, in

surveying the overall data on working women with the simplest straight comparison of participation rates for women’s economic activity in different countries. Table 1.1 shows overall average rates for women between 15 and 64 years of age, while Figure 1.1 displays the age profiles for Japanese, British and Irish women, where in each age group the rate is measured by the percentage of all women in that group engaging in paid work.

It should be remarked that the participation rates are likely to be underestimates, because the self-employed workers who are evading taxes may deny that they are engaged in economic activity. In both the British Isles and Japan it is immediately evident just from talking with friends

that many women participate in the hidden economy. In Ireland such opportunities are limited, but women in the rural areas are working on farms and in small family 3

Setting the scene TABLE 1.1 Female labour force participation rates

1965 1975 1982 1985 1987

Ireland* ~ 34.5 37.6 36.6 37.2

Japan 55.7 51.7 55.9 57.2 —«57.8

UK 50.0 55.1 57.0 60.2 62.0

Notes: 1. Rates measured as economically active women, including those acknowledged to be unemployed, as a percentage of all women aged between 15 and 64 years. 2. *In the case of Ireland, 1987 should be read as 1986.

Source: OECD, Labour Force Statistics. enterprises without pay. British women often provide unreported hairdressing, cleaning and child-minding services,

while in Japan there are fairly significant remunerative opportunities for women, especially in tutoring and in other individual services, such as addressing envelopes in a fine script. The scope of demand for clandestine labour in Japan is quite astonishing. And unlike elsewhere the pay for such

work tends to be relatively high — as could be testified by English teachers from overseas who are continually requested to engage in private tutoring. Even more than in Britain, the Japanese tend to feel that cash payments for such services are nothing to do with the tax office. Nor would many of the women involved be willing to admit that

they were ‘participating in the labour force’. Therefore I would argue that the resulting underestimation of partici-

pation rates is probably greater in Japan than in Britain, although the extent of concealed employment cannot by its very nature ever be measured accurately.' While remembering that those in ‘grey’ employment are not being measured — unless as unemployed members of the labour force — Table 1.1 shows few distinctions between

4|

Japan and the United Kingdom (UK); but it displays a substantially lower rate of economic activity for women in Ireland, which reflects not just the persistence of certain values and a relatively large agricultural sector, but also high levels of unemployment. Since women in Ireland are now

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Thank you very much for your co-operation and the time you have given.

Questions Relating to Women Working in Japanese Companies (submitted to personnel officers)

1. What is the average length of service for:

production workers managerial staff? | i. female —___ 1. female —____

11, male ___ ii. male —___

2. What is the crude annual turnover (separation) rate? 1. female employees ________ ii. male employees _______

3. i.What is the absenteeism rate? . female employees_______. _—s i. male employees —______ 4. In the following categories, what percentage of the total are women?

i. production workers —____ | li. group leaders —___ lll. supervisors ———___

iv. clerical staff — —__

v. managerial staff ———___ | 5. i. Approximately what proportion of the pay packet for production workers is made up of a merit payment/bonus? —___ ii. How is the merit payment determined? —____

11. On average how does a female employee's merit payment compare to that of a male employee? ____>_P»__SSSF 6. What training programmes, including on-the-job training are available for production workers?

281

Index

absenteeism 182-3, 213, 247 canteen 191, 221

adaptability 220, 222 caring jobs 259-60 advertisements 42, 110 casual employment 53, 78, 155, affirmative action 19, 262 165, 169, 257

aged relatives 260 alternatives 146, 168 ageing of society 259 in Britain 81 age limits on job entry 38, 144 seasonal 12, 31

agricultural sector 16, 29-32, 43, casualization 53, 257, 264

83, 156, 159 child allowances 125

Ireland 3, 4, 45, 102, 172 | child-care leave 18, 124, 29-32,

alternative career tracks vii, 268 43, 83, 156, 159

amae 112 European countries 127 American occupation of Japan 16 child-minders 121-122

anti-dumping measures 177, 188 children, care of viii, 138 also see

arubaito 35, 155 family Asahi Shimbun 38, 133, 153, 253 Chuo Koron 107

Asian Women Workers’ clandestine labour 4, 165

Fellowship 66 clerical workers 58

assessment schemes 193-4 cohort analysis 33, 34

attitudes commitment to work 83, 219 to work 174, 203, 209-10, 233, Commons Select Committee 123

241, 244 community

to women working 97-102 activities 161 automation 197, 200-1, 244, 260 company as 221 auxiliary jobs 54, 65-9, 73, 230 commuting time 145, 254

Ballivor 172-4. 192 companies see large, small, iny

BBC 81, :215 et counils 185 company councils pine staff 191-3, 231, 237, company loyalty 43, 50, 144, 200, 247, 255, 264 bonuses 246 ; 218, , - in170, Ireland 180 breadwinner 95-7, 129

company song 247

career breaks 169, 255 also see computers 251-2 re-employment construction workers 31, 59 282

Index

court cases 72-3 education 60, 116, 119, 245-6,

culturalist view 243 268

of children 36, 119

Daily Telegraph, The 238 costs 90 ,

day care 120-4, 130, 216, 262, level 51, 251, 269

268 egalitarianism 51, 55, 232, 240

attitudes to 120-124, 118 lack of 224, 235

effect on babies 126 superficial 221, 241

187 196

demographic factors 40-1, 250 white- and blue-collar 76, 227 Denki Roren 27, 166, 167, 169, Electronic Industries Association

dexterity 60, 260 electronics factories 56, 60, 72, discipline 193, 207, 212, 219, 237, 96, 129, 173, 176-7, 180-1,

241 222-5, 233, 237-9, 244,

discouraged workers 6, 46, 251, 266, 269 also see

1024, 143 semiconductor industry

discrimination xviii, 52, 66, 73, European 190

112 women’s aptitude in 206, 269

awareness of 52 employee involvement 196

in promotion 17, 224, 230 employment adjustment 250

in wages 15, 68-9, 71-3 employment conditions 242,

in USA subsidiaries 171 257-8, 267-9

discrimination theories employment growth 15, 256

73-5 employment security see job

dispatch work 83-4, 155-7 security

dissimilarity index 54—55 Employment Protection Act and

division of labour 268 maternity leave 132

gender-based 253, 263 , engineering, women in 63 in family enterprises 160 entrepreneurs 29, 84, 95 in the home 114, 135, 138, 141, entry wages 69,77 228 also see traditional Equal Employment Opportunity

attitudes : Law ix, 19-20, 52, 64-6,

domestic servants 263 | 105, 141, 211, 227-30, 254 double burden 49, 54, 104, 133, and child-care leave 127

143, 217, 262 and maternity leave 17

Doyukai 84 lack of penal provisions 108 dual labour market 52-3, 74, 189 Equal Opportunities Commission

dual-career families 104—5, 254 107

dual-parent families viii, 254 Equal Pay Act 20, 67 duality in industry 76-8, 188 also Equal Rights Amendment 106

see small companies Equal Value Amendment 67 equal opportunities xviii, 52, 224,

early retirement see 236

retirement European Community 20, 178

Economist, The 80, 195 1992 unified market 176 283

Index

evening classes 223 Honda in USA 171 homeworkers see industrial

Factory Act 16, 26 homework

Factory Bill 16 household chores 41, 134, 216 familism, industrial 242 also see double burden

family xvii, 42, 91, 191, 215, 222, and men 130, 133, 140, 217-8,

243, 254, 255, 262 , 263

sacrifice for 91, 252 time spent on 137 . time available for 139 household economy 88

family and housing allowances 11, household income 41, 87, 92

69, 73 housewives 7, 16, 33, 36-9, 75,

family enterprises ix, 7, 10, 16, 117, 133, 136, 217, 268 27,29, 55, 117, 134, 141, 159, financial control 90

264 , housing costs 89 disadvantages of 160 housing standards 88

and matsuri 161 human capital theory 75

feedback effects 74, 75

feminine ideal 61, 84 ie 116 feminized jobs 55, 110 ikuji kyugyo seido 127 also see

men in 61, 258 child-care leave

feudal era 23 import barriers

financial incentives for evasion of 190 flexible hours 20, 110, 129, 255 Industrial Development

flexible work practices 193, 241, Authority 173, 179

247 industrial disputes 178, 182

Fujitsu 38, 176, 267 women in 26 | Full Circle? 262 industrial distribution of occupations 43-5, 58, 148

gakudo clubs 123 industrial homework 161-4, 252

genetic factors x, 112 pay 12

grandparents 117, 123, 260 industrial structure 44-5 green-field sites 156, 173, 181, 244 future changes in 250

group leaders 202-3, 205 industrialization 24 groupism 243, 245 | informal labour markets 28, 165,

Guardian, The 155 169

Guardian Weekly, The 101 informal sector 9, 30, 53, 55, 264-5

harmony 80, 235, 241 information economy 84, 253-4 health insurance 145 integrated circuits (ICs) 1, 173, higher education 6-8, 33-6, 62, 176

75, 90 internal labour market 74, 226,

Hitachi 255, 267 , 258-61

hoikuen see day care internal promotion 205, 225-6,

homogeneity 42, 51 231, 235,

misleading image 42 Invest in Britain Bureau 178 284

Index

Iwao, Sumiko 91, 247 composition 6 _ labour shortages 269

JETS 267 Labour Standards Law xi, 16-20, 129, 238 labour turnover 182, 247

Japan Economic Journal, The 67, 73, 106, 110, 255 Japan Iron and Steel Federation land prices 89

73 language, female 56, 62, 256

Japan Labor Bulletin 168, 255 large companies x1, 79, 224—7 Japan Times, The xvii, 61, 65, 79, married women in 218

130, 135, 152, 188, 261 late development effect

Japan, trips to 223 27

Japanese investment overseas Le Monde 257

133, 175-9, 250 leave ,

controversy over 190 annual 111, 255 financial incentives 178-9 entitlement 214

parts makers 188 special 215-6 in USA 179, 232 and attitudes 100 job adverts 109 equal opportunity 15 subcontractors 80-2 legislation 106

job rotation 193, 199, 211, 226 equal pay 14-5, 18-9, 256 job satisfaction xi, 198-200, 235, equal value 15, 18

241, 247 protective 106-11

job security 175, 189, 220, 237, length of service 26, 46-8, 154,

240, 246-7, 266 201, 226-7, 260, 267

job sharing 253 by company size 78 employment life cycle 40-1

Joshi saikyo seido 127 also see re- continuity of 12, 227 just-in-time production 183, 188 life expectancy 259

living standards 87

retirement 246

kata-tataki 37 also see early local content requirements 176, katei hoiku 121 also see child- local suppliers to Japanese

minders companies 82, 190

Keizai Doyukai 261 Los Angeles Times 126

kindergartens 122 Low Pay Unit 162 kokaisha 188 also see

subcontractors maihomushugi viii also see family

Komatsu 81, 215, 238 Mainichi Daily News, The 163

koshikake 230 Mainichi Shimbun 52, 99, 177

kuro 91 maintenance jobs 194

kyoiku mama 36, 39, 254 also see management 172, 186, 220, 232,

education of children 237-9, 242-4

indigenization of 191-2

labour force on shop floor 221, 240

quality 178 view of women workers 181 285

Index

managerial positions 66 NEC 1, 21, 25, 38, 109, 197, 227,

women in 54, 57, 66, 254 , 266-7

manual wages 14 child-care leave 129 /

manufacturing 43-5, 55, 60 length of service 201

and female employment 45 | Livingstone plant 176, 185 marriage 75 nursing leave 131 average age of 62 Telford plant 177

matched pairs 21 union 187)

maternity leave 17, 124 - NEC Ireland 1, 119, 137, 146,

at NEC Ireland 215 157, 172-3, 180-1, 227-8, _

pay during 125 > 232, 244

matriarchy 76 union 186

Matsukaze survey 199,217 training 194 Matsushita 21, 109, 197, 227, 239, necessities, expenditure on 88

266 , neo-liberalism 107

in Cardiff 117, 138, 174, 185, ‘new realism’ 263

187, 194, 228 , night work, prohibition on 18

company philosophy 174 Nihon Keizai Shimbun 103, 105,

Osaka — union 187 — | 109, 112, 178, 182 | media 63, 109 , Nihon TV 63 os

Meguro Ward 120-1 Nikkei Woman 142 | , menstrual leave 17 , Nissan 73, 185, 188-9, 238

micro-electronic technology in USA 171

251-3 , temporary labour 190

mid-career recruits 70-1 North East 140

middle class 43 Japanese companies in 171 sense of belonging 89 | nuclear families 123.

monetarization of household —_ nursing leave 131 economy 42

Morinaga 152 Observer, The 126 |

morning exercises 238 occupational distribution 57-8

mortgage 87, 88 occupational segregation 24, mothers working 86, 111-3, 117, 52-3, 60, 67-8, 150, 265 140, 163, 215-6, 218 OECD countries55 _ attitudes to 97, 102, 113, 186 ‘office ladies’ 86, 228-30, 251 feeling of guilt 118 Okutani, Reiko 109-10 future trends 139, 140 Onna Daigaku23,proportions 101 on-the-job training 223, 246

reasons 93-4 lack of 226

stress for 119, 134 overseas investment see Japanese multi-skilled workers 226, 248 _ _ investment overseas | overtime 11, 17, 105, 205-6, 240,

naishoku see industrial homework 254 National Health Insurance 125

Navan 173 ~ Pacific War 23, 32, 49, 180 286

Index

parlite 259 probationary period 193 part-time employment ix, 74, 144, production workers 58

189, 253, 259, 264, 268 productivity levels 209

Scandinavia 8, 154 professional women vii, 36-7,

and double burden 159 39, 56

downgrading of skills 150-1 promotion vii, ix, 64, 195, 202,

employment conditions 151 236, 246-8, 268

for mothers 87 denial of 70-2, 204 growth in 147 protectionism 190 hours 144 public expenditure 101, 120

future issues 157 reluctance 202, 222

industrial distribution 148 public sector employment 11, 14,

involuntary 153 58, 148, 269 ) legislation 158 and wages 15

national insurance 146 purchasing power 88 occupational distribution 150

pay 151, 170 qualifications

reasons for 94-5 lack of 194, 222

segmentation of 150 quality 210, 239, 240 severance pay 158 control (QC) circles 72, 194-6,

so-called 145 210, 222, 243, 246 in small companies 158 questionnaires xvi also see tax payments 152 Appendix and unions 168 quit rates 46 participation rates 3-9, 29, 32,

249, 259, 263, 269 re-employment 124-128, 248,

bimodal distribution 8, 32 268

limits on 228 pension rights 255

paternalism 245 re-entry 32-4, 38-9, 41, 48, 68, paternal leave 129, 264 80, 143-4, 169

patriarchy 43, 75 and wages 12, 70-1 Patten, John 118 reciprocity 176 peripheral labour market 170 Recruit Company 110

also see secondary labour market Recruit Research Company, 77,

permanent employment x, 25, 49, 135

209, 260 recruitment 173-4, 197

personnel management 260 also of school-leavers 193

see management regional development areas 171 ‘pink-collar’ jobs 44 , regular employment 144-5, 224 policies, government 17, 107, repetitive tasks 198-200

118, 264-6 research and design facilities 195,

post-industrial age xvii, 28, 159, 269

164, 249, 259, 264, 269 retailing 9-10, 43-5, 56 primary labour markets 53, retirement, early 37, 80, 230

168, 261 ryosai kembo 21

, 287

Index

‘salary man’ 91, 160, 229 small companies 7, 10, 18, 52, 69,

samurai 43, 49, 116 250, 255, 266 also see tiny Savings rates 89 companies Scotland 181, 188 and child-care leave 129

screwdriver plants and part-timers 146 accusations about 176, 188 and unions 26, 76

secondary labour market ix, 52, social attitudes 62, 262, 268 also

74, 82-4, 143, 157, 166, 202, see attitudes

250, 257, 261, 265 South Korea 58 ,

securities companies 79-80 stress-related illness 262 segregation, vertical 9 also see strikes see industrial disputes occupational segregation subcontractors 76, 80-2, 188-9

Seiyu 129, 131 substitution theory 74

self-employment 3, 9-10, 27-30, supervisors x, 55, 193, 201-2,

78, 164 227, 246, 253, 267-8 |

incomes in 28 advantages of female 205

working hours 165 superwoman myth 136, 263 semiconductor industry 201, 206

in Britain 189 tax payments 4, 170 }

friction 176-7, 206 teachers 57, 105,124 _

seniority promotion 25 , team-work 199, 208, 232, 241 seniority wage system vili, 68, 247 technology transfer 267

for men only 67 teenage culture 61

sensei 61 also see teachers telecommuting 164, 252 service industries 44-5, 60, 78 temp agencies see dispatch work

men in 61 temporary employees 155-6, 189

service sector 27-8, 35, 43, 61, temporary work 226

249, 255-6 growth of 155

France and USA 257 tenure see length of service new occupations 55 tertiary sector see service sector

Sex Discrimination Act 20, 108 textile factories 16, 24-6

sexist observations 185, 194, 196, time-use 136-7 ,

238 Times, The 63, 107, 110, 123, 190,

sexual harassment 47 262

sexual stereotyping 132, 163, 251 tiny companies 77

also see feminized jobs, Tokyo Business Today

language, teenage culture 83 Shiba Shinyo Bank 72 , Tokyo Journal 83 ,

Shin-Etsu Handotai 189 Tokyo Metropolitan Government

shift work 215 , survey 64, 132

short-term employment 24, 223 Toshiba 185, 199 also see length of service track system 65-6 also see

shuushoku senso 37 auxiliary jobs

single mothers 95, 140 trade unions see unions

single-status conditions 192, 242 trade friction 206, 266 288

Index traditional attitudes 83, 134, 135, women’s divisions 76

265 women’s early role in 26

and family enterprises 159 Women’s Protective and

training 193-5, 212, 235-7, Provident League 26

246-8, 267 Yuaikai 26

in Matsushita in Cardiff 194-5 unionization rates 167, 184

in NEC Ireland 174, 194,

210-4 , vocational training 169

on trips to Japan 195

training, respect for 64 wafer-fabrication plants in Britain transfer pricing of multinational 176

profits 190 wage differentials 1x, 52, 66-73, transfers 65, 229 257

Travail 110 Britain and Japan 10-15

turnover rates see labour turnover by age 68-72

twenty-first century industrial by education 69-70

structure 259 by company size 7/7 |

| means 11

unemployment 139, 140, 178, 256 medians 12-3

in Ireland 4, 172-3 over time 11-2

in Japan 46 Wages Act 257 insurance 145 Wales 171, 177, 182

uniform 212, 221, 244 white-collar employees 171,

unions 100, 166, 183 191-3, 224, 228-35, 247 attitude to women 186 ‘white-collarization’ 225-6 and child-care leave for men Winvest 178

130 wives’ income 92

confederations 168 women entrepreneurs 28

EETPU 184 Women’s Centres 265 flexible work agreements 184 work ethic 247 GMBATU 184 work groups 199

ITGWU 186 workaholics viii, xviii, 135, 214 and Labour Standards Law 110 working at home 164

new realist deals 183 working hours xvii, 130, 132, 138, no-strike agreements 179, 184 229, 253-5, 262, 268 and part-time workers 168 Working Mothers Association

pendulum arbitration 184 123 shop stewards 186

single status agreements 183 yen appreciation 178, 250 in small companies 79, 168 youth unemployment 61, 258

TUC 184 youth shortage 157 women's 167

women’s attitudes to 167, 187 zero defect production 191

289