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Gender in Japanese Public Administration

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Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance

Synonyms

Gender in public management; Representative bureaucracy; Sex

Definition

Division of status, roles, and opportunities between the two sexes in Japanese public bureaucracy.

Introduction

Japanese governments have held considerably low levels of gender equality in their workforces. The 2016 Report of the Japanese Cabinet Office for Gender-Equal Society reports that the proportion of women workers who are division heads or higher was 3.5% in the central government and 8.5% in prefectural governments (equivalent to state governments in the USA), while that in the private firms which have over 100 employees was 9.8%. Unlike public sectors in most Western countries, the Japanese public sector, especially the central government, has been slow compared to the private sector to promote women to key decision-making positions. The theory of representative bureaucracy suggests that such underrepresentation of women will make a public bureaucracy unresponsive to women’s interests, opinions,...

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Correspondence to Shugo Shinohara .

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Shinohara, S. (2018). Gender in Japanese Public Administration. In: Farazmand, A. (eds) Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_3264-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_3264-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-31816-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-31816-5

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