Abstract
Women’s economic activity in Japan remains relatively weak, even though it has not entered the phase of full housewifization as in other advanced Western countries such as the USA and Germany. In this chapter, this puzzle is expounded by examining the inconsistent policy orientations of the Japanese government since the postwar period. The tax and social security systems conformed to the type of household, namely, households with male breadwinners and female homemakers. Keeping these programs intact, the Japanese government launched other initiatives intended to promote female labor force participation and increase the birthrate. Partly because of this inconsistency, a substantial gender gap in terms of economic activity remains.
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Notes
- 1.
According to the OECD data, the gender wage gap (the difference between the median earnings of men and women relative to the median earnings of men) in Japan is 25.7%, compared to the OECD average of 14.1%. See https://data.oecd.org/earnwage/gender-wage-gap.htm for the detail.
- 2.
This period roughly coinsided with the period of stable birthrate. See also the argument in Sect. 2.1 in Chap. 2 of this volume.
- 3.
In the 1950s in Japan, a large proportion of woman had more than three children, and the average life length was approximately 65 years. The proportion of employed women was around 20% in the 1950s (Long-term Labor Statistics of Japan).
- 4.
One can argue that some Asian societies such as Taiwan are examples of the former case. In Taiwan, women’s economic participation is relatively higher than in Japan and South Korea (Lee 2001; Brinton 2001). On the other hand, the fertility rate in Taiwan is much lower than that in Japan (in 2016, the TFR was 1.17 in Taiwan and 1.44 in Japan). The reality of the relative activeness of Taiwanese women is explored in Takeuchi and Tsutsui (2016).
- 5.
The statistics are provided in the government report, “Current Conditions of Working Women, 2010.”
- 6.
See the government report, “Current Conditions of Working Women, 2012.”
- 7.
From January 2018, to obtain the full tax reduction, a spouse’s annual income (if there is no income other than employment income) should be less than 1,500,000 yen (approximately 14,000 US dollars).
- 8.
In most cases, models originated in advanced Western countries such as the UK, Germany, the USA, or France. For instance, the social insurance system in Japan was built on the German model. Programs in the USA influenced postwar tax systems and the education system. Some family friendly programs such as the allowance for dependent children are similar to those in France.
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Tsutsui, J. (2020). Stagnant Women’s Employment Participation in Japan. In: Work and Family in Japanese Society. SpringerBriefs in Population Studies(). Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2496-3_3
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