Women in Leadership in Japan

• In Event: Current Perspectives on Asian Women in Leadership

Short Description

Considering that the number of women in management positions has not increased in Japan, the presenter will discuss the state of women in leadership positions through a historical overview of Japanese women in leadership and the Japanese work environment. Implications for research and practice will be shared.

Detailed Abstract

Though Japan had made rapid economic leaps forward in the 1970s and 1980s, the country’s productivity growth has steadily shrunk in almost every sector (Desvaux et al., 2015). Despite its economic growth over the past decades, gender equality in the labor market has not made much progress. According to the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare (2016), women over age 15 represent 49.2% of the Japanese workforce, yet the number of women in management positions is still low, reaching only 8.3%, and only 6.0% of general managers are women nationwide in 2014. As Japan faces a rapidly aging society with a shrinking working population, the government announced that it would increase the percentage of women in management to 30% by 2020 through the implementation and support of the Actions for Promoting Female Participation (The Office of Prime Minister, 2014), but the situation is not promising.

There has been growing attention to the state of women in leadership in the labor market since the Gender Equality and Employment Law was enacted in 1986 (Hadano, 2008). Although a gradual progress has been made in women’s participation in the labor market in the past three decades, we still face a significant challenge in developing women leaders. According to the Global Gender Gap Report released by the World Economic Forum (2015), Japan ranked 82nd in women’s involvement in the workforce, yet it ranked 116th in women’s participation in leadership positions. A crucial factor in the lack of women in leadership positions is a dip in the percentage of working women in the years of childbirth and child rearing in their thirties and forties, with the average age of women’s marriage being 29.4 years old (Gender Equality Bureau Cabinet Office, 2016). Japanese women’s participation in the labor force shows an M Curve indicating a pattern of discontinuous women employment (Cooke, 2010; Mun & Brinton, 2015). Many women leave their jobs to raise their children because the traditional view is deeply entranched in Japan that men are expected to work while women are responsible for family and child-rearing (Cho et al., 2015). These deep-rooted norms make it difficult for mothers to continue working and pursuing their careers in Japan.

In my presentation, I will discuss the current status of women in leadership in the Japanese workforce and whether women’s leadership roles have changed. Many factors contribute to barriers and challenges to women’s leadership development in three main areas: government politics, organizational factors, and women’s motivation for career advancement. I will also discuss signs of hope in women’s leadership development, including general legislative support, organizational and institutional efforts, and education and training opportunities. I will conclude my presentation with implications for future research and practice.

Participant

• Yoshie Tomozumi Nakamura, Columbia University