Howard French’s third article in a series on the possibility of change in Japan covers the role of women. The scariest aspect of the whole article is the graph that shows how inequal the gender gap is here in Japan.
While it is unfair to look at a country merely by statistics, it is clear that the gender gap is so wide that is hurting the nation. Cutting off the future of women in Japan to spite the face of Japan, so to speak. I’ve worked in two of the most prominent Japanese firms and the lack of female executive management is starkly obvious.
Whether it is immigration, national defense, or the role of women, Japan has tremendous potential in front of it IF the nation as a whole decides to embrace it. However, the pace and amount of change needed to even reach parity with other nations is staggering, especially for a nation where change comes slowly due to consensus decision-making and a culture of unclear decisions.
I hear rumors that French is moving on to other offices in Asia, and I hope that whomever replaces him, if anyone, will be half as phenomenal as he has been. Between Ken Belson and Howard French, I’ve really enjoyed the NY Times coverage of Japan in the recent years.
Japan’s Neglected Resource: Female Workers
also please note an earlier post I did on the status of women in Japan based on an excellent post on the NBR mailing list.
Series: Can Japan Change?
From Gen Kanai, who has been following this series on his weblog: Howard French of the New York Times has…
Have you ever considered that the reason why the number of women is lower than men in the workforce is because men and women are genetically different? Perhaps Men are more motivated by working than women hence there are more of them working. There have been scientific books on this pointing out such things.
The only reason we have such high numbers of women working in western countries is because of positive discrimination and the way that they are pressured in school to be independant and career minded. Education has changed a lot since the good old 1950s.
There is also the problem of the welfare state not allowing women who are married with families to stay at home and bring up children if they want to. It is unfortunately biased towards making both parents work, therefore they have no choice but to pay for childcare, which is not really the best option if you want to bring up a child properly.
Women not being very present in the workforce is actually a good thing since there will be more women at home whom are able to bring up children which is the only realistic way in which to fight Japan’s population decline. The Japanese government just has to actively encourage them to have more children through financial incentives.
Equality between men and women can be pursued endlessly, but it will never be achieved.