Japanese Women Working

"Japanese Women Working" provides a wide range of perspectives on the study of working women in Japan in the twentieth century. The contributors--including historians, economists, anthropologists and management specialists from both Japan and the Western world--address issues of state policy toward and management of working women, and at the same time also provides accounts of the experiences of particular groups of workers: domestic staff, hospital workers, textile workers, miners, homeworkers and professional housewives. The essays in this volume span a period of rapid economic change in Japan and examine the country in its developing and its industrialized state, demonstrating the importance of the overall economic environment as well as cultural factors in determining women's positions in the labor market.

Janet Hunter

List of figures, List of tables, Notes on contributors, Preface, 1 Introduction, 2 Redundancy utilized: the economics of female domestic servants in pre-war Japan, 3 One day at a time: work and domestic activities of urban lower-class women in early twentieth-century Japan, 4 Textile factories, tuberculosis and the quality of life in industrializing Japan, 5 Female labour in the Japanese coal-mining industry, 6 Equality versus difference: the Japanese debate over 'motherhood protection', 1915-50, 7 Japanese care assistants in hospitals, 1918-88, 8 Women as bosses: perceptions of the ama and their work, 9 Equal employment opportunities for Japanese women: changing company practice, 10 The role of the professional housewife, Index