Risutora: The Impact Of Globalization And Restructuring Upon Women In .

Glossary of Japanese TermsAjia no onnatachi no kaiArubaitoBurakuminDai Nippon Aikoku Fujin KaiDanjou kyoudou sankakuDanjyou byoudouDuburu sukuruEikyuu shuushokuEndakaFujin KaikanFujin Roudousha mondaikenkyuukaiGaiatsuGaishikeiGakureki shugiHakenkaishaHakenHishainIeIppanshokuJosei SentaaJoseigakuKaizenKanbanKazuko kokkaKeiretsuKekkon taishokuKokusai Fujin-nen Renraku-kaiKoshikakeMinikomiNaishokuNaiyo no koNenkoNikkeirenO-bentoOnna kara Onnatachi e:Ichinichi Juen no KaiOnna no NettowakinguOnnarrashiAssociation of Asian WomenPart-time job carried out by a studentDisadvantaged outcaste groupGreater Japan Women's PatrioticAssociationJoint participation of men and womenGender equalityAttending a vocational course at the sametime as taking a bachelor's or associatedegree ('double school')Lifetime employmentThe rising value of the Japanese yenWomen's CentreWomen Workers Research GroupForeign PressureForeign-Affiliate firmEducational credentialismWorker dispatching agencyDispatched work IworkerNon-regular workerFamily IhouseholdGeneral trackWomen's CentreWomen's StudiesContinuous improvement'Just in Time' production aimed ateliminating wastelit. family state, idea of all Japanese peopleone family under the EmperorCorporate grouping characterised by largefirms heading a subcontracting chain ofsmaller firmsRetirement upon marriageInternational Women's Year Conference onJapanTemporary SeatNewsletter, often produced by activistgroupsHomeworkingDomestic labourSystem of payment according to seniorityJapan Federation of Employers' AssociationLunchboxFrom Woman to Women: Ten-Yen a DaygroupWomen's NetworkingFeminine or womanlyx

PaalitePaatoPaalo no obachanRyosai kenboSanbelsu KaigiSangyou Houkoku KaiSeiri kyuukaSeishainSeku HaraSenmonkaSenmonshokuShiba Shin kinShokuba no hanaShougyou RourenSogoshokuSohyouTokuseiUuman ribuYakuzaZenkokulppanZenzorenPart-time elitePart-time work I employeeMiddle-aged women carrying out paatoworkGood wife and wise motherIndustrial UnionIndustrial Patriotic SocietyMenstrual leave (lit. physiological leave)Regular workerSexual HarassmentSpecialistSpecialist TrackShiba Credit Association"Office flowers" - young (and attractive)female white collar workers"Japan Federation of Commercial Workers'UnionManagement trackGeneral Council of Trade UnionsSpecial character'Women's Lib'Japanese mafiaNational Union of General WorkersNational Confederation of Trade Unionsxi

List of Tables and 7.137.148.18.2National Regulatory Changes 1991-2002Expansion of intermediate food trade in Japan and East Asia:Share of machinery parts in machinery as a whole(1990 and 1998)FDI outflow from Japan by destination (1997-1999)Examples or reduced or eliminated East Asian investmentbarriers.Examples of reduced or eliminated East Asian non-tariffbarriersTrends in number of foreign companies by county regionCross border M & As in five Asian countries most affectedby the currency crisisAverage tariff rates of East Asian countries (1988-2000)Transnationality index of host economies (1997)The distribution of gainfully employed women (1906-1936)Women's participation in the labour force (1955-1995)The average age of male and female regular employeesand average years of service (1949-1994)A cross-national comparison of the growth in part-time workDiversification of the labour force (1986-1997)Part-time employment among female workers in majorindustrialized countriesChanges in the sex composition of the workforce of regularemployees (1970s - 2000)Average tenure of female workers in the regular workforceThe number and proportion of female students attendingfour year universities (1975-2000)Percentage of female students at four year universitiesImpact of the 1985 Equal Employment Opportunity Act(active 1995)What is your most important reason for working?Reasons cited by establishments for hiring non-regular workersSubsidiary firms running worker dispatching businesses foundedby main city banksThe sexual division of regular and non-regular employmentWhat kind of satisfaction do you get from your job?Regular workers can more easily take time off under variousholiday systemsRegular workers tackle their jobs more positivelyWhat do you think of the wage rate of part-timers and non-regularworkers, compared to regular workers doing the same job?Hourly earnings of female part-time workersContractual cash earnings of regular non-managerial employeesLabour force participation by sexFemale labour force participation by ageWomen diet members, Jan. 1988 - Mar. 2001Number of female local assembly 58259279279

AcknowledgementsAlthough this thesis is my own work, I have been very fortunate in receiving agreat deal of support, as well as thought-provoking comments andsuggestions from many people during the research process.lowe an enormous debt of gratitude to my supervisors, Georgina Waylen,Jenny Roberts, and Glenn Hook. I would also like to thank all connected withPERC: particularly Sylvia McColm for making it a lovely place to be, as well asmy friends and fellow PERCies,Rajiv Prabhakar, Jonathan Perraton andPeter Wells, who have all taken the time to read drafts and make useful andpertinent comments. Peter Wells deserves special recognition, since, as mylandlord, he also had to live with me while I was writing up.I could not have conducted fieldwork in Japan without the generousassistance of Usui Yuki, Komatsu Makiko, Koedou Shizuko, Morishita Miwa,Miwa Kyoko, and Nakura Yoshie, who have acted as key informants, vitallinks to activist networks, translators and interpreters, but, most of all, havebeen great people to have as friends.I learnt much from access to the meetings, actions and internal papers ofWorking Women's Network, Working Women's International Network, WomenHelping Women, Shosha ni hataraku Josei, Tokyo Josei Union and Women'sMessages. Reasons of space stop me acknowledging by name all the otherwomen who kindly took the trouble to take part in interviews, fill outquestionnaires and send me documents.I am also grateful to the ESRC, the University of Sheffield, the University ofShiga, the International Research Centre for Japanese Studies, theInternational Studies Association, the Anglo-Japanese Academy and theNordic Institute for Asian Studies for providing me with grants and otherresources to enable me to carry out my research and attend seminars andconferences.xiii

Marina Lee-Cunin and Shannon Frances have been truly (practically andemotionally) supportive friends, as have Ashley Hyde, Peter Holcroft andRoger Ashman - I am incredibly lucky to know them.I would like to dedicate this thesis to my mum and dad, who have alwaysencouraged me, but never pushed.xiv

Chapter One: IntroductionAims, Methodology and Structure of the Thesis1

1.0. IntroductionThis thesis argues that globalization is a real, but not an immutable, forcewhich is producing profound changes in national models of capitalism andnational socio-economic institutions, and impacting differently upon differentgroups within these national models.Specifically globalization has differentimpacts upon men and women. This thesis puts forward an analysis of therelationship between gender and globalization using women workers in Japanas a case study. The case of Japan was chosen because its distinctive modelof capitalism is being transformed by the processes associated withglobalization. As men and women have had very different positions withinthat model, this transformation is having different impacts upon male andfemale workers.The last few decades have seen growing cultural, economic and politicalinterconnections and interdependencies between countries.Globalizationresults from flows of people; flows of images and information through themass media; flows of central ideas, terms and images; flows of ideologies;flows of technology; and increasingly rapid flows of international capitalbetween national economies (Appadurai, 1990). While these flows impactupon all countries to a greater or lesser extent, this thesis will argue, that theway in which globalization impacts upon nations depends upon cultural orinstitutional factors.Furthermore globalization does not impact upon allgroups within a nation in the same way: the impact of globalization on anyindividual will be mediated by, among other things, gender, age, ethnicity andsocial class.Japan was chosen as a case study because of its distinctive national model ofcapitalism, which is characterised by clearly gendered division of labour, andby a government which long resisted adopting the neo-liberal modelassociated with globalization.The Japanese national model of capitalism isdefined in Section 1.1. This thesis analyses the relationship of the institutionsof the Japanese national model of capitalism to globalization. It shows how2

Japanese government and business reactions to globalization are interactingwith changes in the roles and expectations of women in the Japanese labourforce. Specifically, it shows that, faced with the pressures of globalization, theJapanese state and other key economic actors are attempting to deregulatethe Japanese labour market. At the same time the development of the idealof equality of opportunity and of a nascent global legal standard of sexequality within the workplace has resulted in the Japanese governmentincreasing the regulation of women's labour rights.This chapter will put the research into its academic context and explain thecentral aims of the thesis. It will then describe the method that have beenused, before setting out the structure of the thesis and outlining thecontribution made by each chapter to the overall argument of the thesis, andto meeting its central aims (shown in italics).1. 1. ContextThe rate of economic growth of Japan in the 1950s and 1960s1, itsconsequent increased importance in the world economy and its apparentlylow level of industrial strife have attracted considerable attention fromWestern theorists since the late 1950s.The focus of much industrialrelations literature in English about the Japanese model has been theorganisation of work for core workers within large companies. Abegglen andStalk (1985) wrote of the way workers traded a guarantee of lifetimeemployment for loyalty to the firm. Dore (1986) attributed the success of theJapanese model to 'flexible rigidities': the tendency towards oligopoly, tenuredjob security for core workers and state underwriting of capital, actually madethe Japanese system more flexible in that they engendered co-operativeness,functional flexibility, the ability to negotiate sensible compromises betweencapital and labour, and thoroughness of planning.Political economistsexamined the idea that we were witnessing a "global Japanisation" of the1In the 19505 and 19605, economic growth in Japan averaged 10 per cent per annum in realterms (Maruo, 1997).3

labour process (Jessopet a',1987; Elger and Smith 1994). Japan's recent, economic decline has again focussed business and academic opinion onJapan. The focus now however is on how the Japanese model is changing torespond to the exigencies of globalization (Boyer and Drache, 1996;Hasegawa and Hook, 1998; Hook and Hasegawa, 2001; Dore, 2000).Theorists such as Abegglen (1958) and Dore (1973, 1986) largely neglectedthe role of women in the Japanese workforce.The classical Japanese'model', which they described, was one that was mainly relevant to maleworkers (Wakisaka, 1997: 31), despite the fact that female workers haveconstituted a significant part of the workforce. In 1945, the proportion ofworking women in the total population was arguably the highest of alldeveloped nations (Iwao, 1993: 154).However, Japan was the onlyindustrialised country in which a decline in the number of women workingoutside the home was observed for the years following the Second WorldWar.Today, Japanese women participate in the workforce in numberscomparable to those of women in other modern industrial societies2 Thisreversal in participation trends can be attributed to a number of factorsincluding an increase in longevity, a decline in the fertility rate 3, an increase inhousing and education costs, the return of 'baby boom' wives to the labourmarket, and changing social attitudes to women's place in society (Whittaker,1990). Furthermore, the Equal Employment Opportunities Law (EEOL), whichcame into effect in 1986 and was revised in 1997 (with the revisions cominginto effect in April 1999), has been enacted with the ostensible aim of givingwomen equal opportunities in the workplace. These social and legal changes,which are, as I shall show also partially attributable to globalization, areinteracting with government and company attempts to restructure theJapanese model of employment in the face of economic globalization.2In 2001, 41 per cent of the Japanese workforce was female (Ministry of PubliC Management,Home Affairs, Posts (sic) and Communications, 2002).3The number of births per woman has fallen from 4.54 in 1947 to 1.3 today (Ministry ofHealth, Labour and Welfare, 2002).4

In Japan, as in other countries, women earn less, on average, than men andtend to be vertically and horizontally segregated from men in the workforce(Gelb and Palley, 1994:9). This trend is becoming even more marked as thelabour shortage resulting from demographic change, i.e. a shortage of youngpeople entering the labour market, draws more women into the paidworkforce, particularly into poorly rewarded 'non-core' jobs, as this thesis willdemonstrate. This process is being facilitated by legal change (Sugeno andSuwa, 1997) and the planned and actual reorganisation of the Japaneselabour force, which intensified in the wake of the East Asian economic crisis ofthe late 1990s (Economist, 1998). The changing regional political economy ofEast Asia has had particular consequences for Japan. The intensecompetitiveness of other East Asian economies, the international reaction tothe high value of the yen, and the relocation of a substantial proportion ofJapanese manufacturing to other countries have led to predictions thatJapan's distinctive labour practice will be radically restructured (Ministry ofLabour,1999).Despite obvious similarities with trends in Westernindustrialised economies, there is a tendency for the deeply gendered divisionof labour in Japan to be seen as either rooted in national culture (Stockman,Bonney and Xuewen, 1995) or as an epiphenomenon resulting from Japan'srelatively late industrialisation (Brinton, 1993).I shall show that, althoughaffected by the Japanese family model, a gendered division of labour wasestablished in the specific conditions of the postwar international politicaleconomy. This division of labour is changing in response to a changing globalpolitical economy.The structural transformation of other developed economies has hadparticularly far-reaching effects for women in all 'core' areas of the worldeconomy. The growth of the service sector, the leisure industry and the useof information technology have affected several aspects of the organisation ofwork, including the proportions of men and women in the workforce, the typesof employment available, the number of temporary and part-time jobs, work5

and leisure-related aspirations; and the place of work in women's life course(Dex, 1988: 1). Globalization is accelerating structural change in developedand developing countries. However, most mainstream theoretical work aboutglobalization does not emphasise the particular effects that such structuralchange has for women. As Chapter Three will show, feminist veperspectives to mainstream theories of globalization.addedgenderedHowever, theseperspectives have been of limited applicability to Japan. The characteristicsof Japan's national model of capitalism have influenced the patterns ofwomen's participation in the workforce throughout the post war period.Furthermore, unlike other First World countries, Japan has maintained thetradition of the three-generation household 4. This family structure impacts ondemand for migrant domestic workers; means that highly-educated womentend to leave the workforce upon becoming mothers, then re-enter theworkforce at rather lower levels than they left; and informs governmentassumptions about welfare provision and the appropriate legal framework fornon-regular work.The patterns of resistance to neo-liberal globalization andactivism in support of equal labour rights for women are also informed byJapan's normative homosocial order.1. 2. Central Aims of ThesisThe central aims of this thesis are as follows: To contribute to the debate about the impact of globalization uponwomen by bringing in insights from the case of Japan into the wideracademic discourse. To examine the impact of restructuring upon women's employment inJapan. To describe the actions women are taking individually and collectively toresist or campaign for change in their working environment and the lawsand practices regulating it.4Although this is becoming less common in reality, the ideal perSists and impacts upon policyand expectations of women's reproductive labour.6

1. 3. MethodologyI used a mixed mode of data gathering, drawing on both quantitative andqualitative data.Most statistical information in this thesis comes from thewealth of data published by Japanese government agencies, trade unions,and research organisations, as well as that produced by activists. These dataare complemented by material from semi-structured interviews with workingwomen, in-depth interviews with trade union representatives, plaintiffs in courtcases about gender and employment, and Japanese academics, as well asprimary data from reports, and surveys.Using a mixture of research methods is often recommended as a way toachieve triangulation, i.e., when the same explanations of accounts can beobtained from different sources then the explanation is more plausible.Mason's (1994) rationale for combining quantitative and qualitative methods isalso persuasive. This was not so much to permit triangulation but to allow thequantitative component to map general patterns and the qualitative stag

3.1 Macro-level feminist analyses of globalization Neo-liberal economic globalization The discourse of globalization 3.2 The impact of globalization The feminization of waged work Women's reproductive work Globalization and female migrant workers Globalization and difference The interaction of global and local forces 3.3 Women's Activism