Women and the Economic Miracle: Gender and Work in Postwar JapanThis lucid, hard-hitting book explores a central paradox of the Japanese economy: the relegation of women to low-paying, dead-end jobs in a workforce that depends on their labor to maintain its status as a world economic leader. Drawing upon historical materials, survey and statistical data, and extensive interviews in Japan, Mary Brinton provides an in-depth and original examination of the role of gender in Japan's phenomenal postwar economic growth. Brinton finds that the educational system, the workplace, and the family in Japan have shaped the opportunities open to female workers. Women move in and out of the workforce depending on their age and family duties, a great disadvantage in a system that emphasizes seniority and continuous work experience. Brinton situates the vicious cycle that perpetuates traditional gender roles within the concept of human capital development, whereby Japanese society "underinvests" in the capabilities of women. The effects of this underinvestment are reinforced indirectly as women sustain male human capital through unpaid domestic labor and psychological support. Brinton provides a clear analysis of a society that remains misunderstood, but whose economic transformation has been watched with great interest by the industrialized world. This lucid, hard-hitting book explores a central paradox of the Japanese economy: the relegation of women to low-paying, dead-end jobs in a workforce that depends on their labor to maintain its status as a world economic leader. Drawing upon historical ma |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Women in the Japanese and US Economies | 24 |
Human Capital Development Systems | 71 |
The Evolution of a Gendered Employment System | 109 |
Gendered Work Lives | 141 |
Gendered Education | 189 |
Conclusion | 222 |
Research Design for the ThreeCity Study | 239 |
Supplementary Tables | 247 |
| 279 | |
| 295 | |
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Women and the Economic Miracle: Gender and Work in Postwar Japan Mary C. Brinton Limited preview - 2023 |
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agriculture American blue-collar Blue-Collar Workers capital development system Census chōsa compared daughters dualism Dummy variable early Education Junior high educational system employed employment status employment system entered the labor experience family enterprise workers female labor force female workers Figure force participation rate full-time employees gender stratification hiring household human capital development increase institutions internal labor market International Labor Organization investment Japan Japanese women job rotation juku junior college junior high school Kodaira labor force participation large firms LOGIT male workers marriage Maximum likelihood men's and women's ment mothers occupations older cohort on-the-job training part-time workers patterns permanent employment Prime Minister proportion recruitment response Rohlen role rōnin sample Sapporo sector self-employed self-employment sex discrimination sex segregation shows significant social sons South Korea starting wages statistical discrimination statistically structure survey tion Tokyo Toyohashi United university aspirations university education university graduates West Germany white-collar workplace
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