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The Silent Revolution in Japan: Female Labour Market Success from an Aggregate Perspective

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Corporate Social Responsibility and Gender Equality in Japan

Part of the book series: CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance ((CSEG))

Abstract

We use labor market data spanning 1988–2018 to show how labor market outcomes in terms of the number of standard and non-standard jobs have strongly outperformed projections based on labor market participation rates and size of active population. As we show, a substantial part of this employment growth originated from an increase in female labor market participation. We further document a general decline of the gender pay gap, and of the pay gap between standard and non-standard employment. Part of this female success actually came at the expense of men, particularly so for the period 2010–2018, during which male regular employment declined while that of women strongly increased. What is more, women were making these inroads particularly within formerly male-dominated industries, such as construction, manufacturing, and banking & insurance. Notably, this success did not originate from firms increasingly struggling to identify suitable male candidates: On the industry level, we find no significant correlation between job opening ratios and gender differentials in employment growth.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.nenshuu.net/sonota/contents/seiki.php.

  2. 2.

    http://www.gender.go.jp/about_danjo/whitepaper/h28/zentai/html/zuhyo/zuhyo01-02-13.html

  3. 3.

    Permanent employees (jôyôrôdôsha) are employees (1) with an open-ended employment contract, or (2) with a fixed-term employment contract of 1 month or more.

  4. 4.

    See http://www.tdb.co.jp/report/watching/press/pdf/p180805.pdf; https://financial-field.com/living/2019/01/09/entry-32941

  5. 5.

    As data from the Labour Force Survey shows, many companies continued to hire constant or increasing numbers of regular employees up to 1997, even though the Japanese economy showed clears signs of a steep economic downturn. Such—in hindsight—irrational behavior during or after bubbles has been variously documented (see, e.g. Scherbina & Schlusche, 2014).

  6. 6.

    See for example https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2016/01/05/editorials/plight-of-irregular-workers/#.XRXS18RCS70; https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/japan-40-percent-of-workers-in-irregular-employment-with-low-pay-and-little-stability

  7. 7.

    “Living-related and personal services” encompasses services related to housekeeping, cleaning, health and beauty, weddings, funerals, theatres, cinemas, travel, sports centres and similar.

  8. 8.

    Data for 15–64 are not available for all years from 2010 to 2018. Results are thus not directly comparable with the tables and figures given in section “Developments by Employment Type” (which exclude the 65+ category).

  9. 9.

    During the bubble economy there was a construction boom in office buildings, hotels, golf parks, and amusements parks.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Stefania Lottanti von Mandach & Georg Blind

Authors
  1. Stefania Lottanti von Mandach
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  2. Georg Blind
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stefania Lottanti von Mandach .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Management, Massey Business School, Massey University, Auckland Campus, Auckland, New Zealand

    Gabriel Eweje

  2. School of Business Administration, Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan

    Shima Nagano

Appendix

Appendix

Table 9.8 Labour demand and change differentials between genders by employment type and industry (2010–2018)
Full size table

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Lottanti von Mandach, S., Blind, G. (2021). The Silent Revolution in Japan: Female Labour Market Success from an Aggregate Perspective. In: Eweje, G., Nagano, S. (eds) Corporate Social Responsibility and Gender Equality in Japan. CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75154-8_9

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