Ithaca; London: ILR Press [imprint of Cornell University Press], 2016. viii, 282 pp. (Tables, graph.) US$49.95, cloth. ISBN 978-1-5017-0248-8.
Why are so few women found in management positions in large Japanese corporations? What is preventing women from reaching the top? This is a deeply researched, passionately argued, and also rather dispiriting book that answers these questions. The author is a sociologist whose previous work analyzed Asian American/white interracial romance based on interviews. For the present book she interviewed 39 women and 25 men working at five different Japanese companies. These interviews from 2007 provide evidence for the author’s argument about why vertical gender segregation persists in the Japanese workplace. Thirty years after the passage of the Equal Employment Opportunity Law, why so little change, why so few women at the top?
The author’s conclusion is that Japanese “employment customs” are to blame. These customs, which cover separate-track hiring, lifelong employment (for career-track men), seniority-based pay and promotion, and excessive work hours, have long been identified as characteristics of Japanese employment (chapter 2). The author nonetheless saw a gap in existing scholarship, where “little systematic empirical research has been done on exactly how sex segregation in Japanese companies continues to be shaped by this set of employment customs” (2). She thus set out to examine exactly how these customs perpetuate inequality.
The interviewees worked at some of the largest employers of women in Japan: three financial firms and two cosmetics firms, identified only by pseudonyms (chapter 3). The most successful in promoting women is “Mikado Bank,” which was sold in 2000 to a US firm and thus faced pressure to adopt US-style management practices. Although lifelong employment continued for the most part, the bank eliminated the custom of hiring workers into career and non-career tracks. It shed Japanese (male) workers over fifty by offering early retirement packages, and hired midcareer Japanese workers with US educational credentials and overseas job experience. These included women with MBA degrees. Likely as a direct result of these changes, Mikado Bank’s managers included 20 percent women in 2007, rising to an impressive 26 percent by 2013. While this suggests that foreign ownership may spur better promotion of women, Nemoto is careful to note that this correlation is not always so obvious, as Japanese customs often resist change initiated by foreign owners (77–79). The other two financial corporations are very traditionally Japanese, and very masculine: Daigo Life Insurance was sued in 1995 and again in 2011 for sexual discrimination and harassment. In both cases the plaintiffs won. Shijo Asset Management touts its globalization and diversity initiatives, but in 2007 less than 2 percent of its management was female.
On the other hand, the two cosmetic firms employ large numbers of women, have progressive childcare leave policies, and are generally regarded as workplaces friendly to women, including mothers. Yet this does not necessarily translate to more women at the top: at Hanakage Cosmetics the ratio of women among managers was only 6 percent in 2007 and 11 percent in 2013, while Takane Cosmetics did a little better at 14 and 26 percent, respectively. (The latter notably has its own childcare facility for its employees.) Even this last figure, however, means that 75 percent of management positions are held by men. As the author points out, 800 out of Takane’s 3,500 male workers reach management rank, while only 270 out of its 12,000 female workers do so. That’s one in four men, versus one in forty-four women.
Employment customs are the culprit. Women are overwhelmingly hired into non-career tracks, or into even more precarious temporary or irregular tracks, given low-level jobs that suppress their aspirations, and are all but forced to quit upon marriage or birth of the first child. Even if a woman continues or returns to work––as increasing numbers do, especially at the cosmetic firms––she is rated low on performance reviews for having taken time off for childcare. Often unable or unwilling to relocate and put in the excessively long hours expected of regular male workers, women are bumped off the ladder of promotion to management positions because of their perceived lack of experience and ability (chapter 4).
As both male and female workers testify, there is a culture of gender bias and stereotypes that beset aspiring female managers (chapter 5). The long working hours destroy the mental and physical health of male workers, and further exacerbate the separation between them and women tasked with housework and child care (chapter 6). Sexual harassment is rampant and enforces obligatory feminine behaviour while also promoting hegemonic masculinity (chapter 7). The picture is very grim indeed.
Is there any hope? Nemoto states that what is required for true change is “revitalizing the labor market, making rigorous use of performance-based pay and promotion over simple age-based seniority, and instituting affirmative action-type policies and gender-equality training” (4). Is this likely to happen? She notes that serious pressure from global competition might prompt change. But she also reminds us that gender inequality has long played a “latent function” for Japanese business and the Japanese state (4). Why should Japanese businesses eliminate gender inequality when it has functioned so well to cut labour costs? Why should the Japanese state do more to push for change, when the “male breadwinner model” has served to curb the cost of welfare?
This is where we finally arrive at the question of women’s own desires for equality and self-expression through work. In the concluding chapter, Nemoto introduces the opinions of Japanese feminists, scolding them for not pursuing individualism and economic equality, and for not being more like American feminists. One could object that Japanese feminists have voiced a variety of positions on this issue (see Julia Bullock, Ayako Kano, and James Welker, eds. Rethinking Japanese Feminisms, Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2018). But on this we agree: as long as cost-cutting is the only goal, the gender ratio at the top of Japanese corporations is unlikely to change.
Ayako Kano
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA