Duh -- Japanese Women Discriminated Against in the Workforce

In this article about Japanese women in the workforce, they finally get it right -- there are two kinds of discrimination, active and passive. The active kind is where women are simply looked over or set aside for promotions; the passive kind is where employees who leave before 6:30 p.m. (in order to pick up their children) are demoted or dismissed. I think the situation in Japan is coming to a crisis, and fast; a friend of mine has twins and is pregnant with her 3rd child, and her husband regularly does not come home before 10:30 p.m. during weekdays and frequently works weekends as well. I have a word for this kind of work ethic: insanity. While putting yourself into your job and doing well is to be commended, this is burning out your best and brightest, as well as effectively blocking women from ever entering the higher echelons of management. I lived in Japan for nearly three years, and I could never take that kind of pace (luckily, I picked the countryside, which has a much slower pace and doesn't expect people to stay past 5:00 p.m. most of the time, unless it includes heavy drinking with co-workers). Anyway, all in all an interesting article, and a great glimpse after reading about our "entitlement" generation!

TOKYO, Aug. 5 — Yukako Kurose joined the work force in 1986, a year after Japan passed its first equal opportunity law. Like other career-minded young women, she hoped the law would open doors. But her promising career at a department-store corporate office ended 15 years ago when she had a baby.

Yukako Kurose said she was forced into a dead-end clerical job after she had a baby.

She was passed over for promotions after she started leaving work before 6:30 each evening to pick up her daughter from day care. Then, she was pushed into a dead-end clerical job. Finally, she quit.

“Japanese work customs make it almost impossible for women to have both a family and a career,” said Ms. Kurose, 45, who now works for a polyester company.

Since the Equal Employment Opportunity Law was passed in 1985, women have become a common sight on factory floors, at construction sites and behind the wheels of taxis. But they have had much less success reaching positions of authority, which remain the preserve of gray-suited salarymen.

In 1985, women held just 6.6 percent of all management jobs in Japanese companies and government, according to the International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency. By 2005, that number had risen to only 10.1 percent, though Japan’s 27 million working women made up nearly half of its work force. By contrast, women held 42.5 percent of managerial jobs in the United States in 2005, the organization said.

Experts on women’s issues say outright prejudice is only part of Japan’s problem. An even bigger barrier to the advancement of women is the nation’s notoriously demanding corporate culture, particularly its expectation of morning-to-midnight work hours.