Women's Employment in Japan

The low status accorded to part-time workers in Japan has resulted in huge inequalities in the workplace. This book examines the problem in-depth using case-study investigations in Japanese workplaces, and reveals the extent of the inequality. It shows how many part-time workers, most of whom are women, are concentrated in low paid, low skilled, poorly unionised service sector jobs. Part-time workers in Japan work hours equivalent to, or greater than, full-time workers, but receive lower financial and welfare benefits than their full-time colleagues. Overall, the book demonstrates that the way part-time work is constructed in Japan reinforces and institutionalises the sexual division of labour.

Kaye Broadbent lectures in the School of Industrial Relations, Griffith University. She co-edited Employment Relations in the Asia Pacific: Changing Approaches (2000). She has been a visiting researcher at the Insitute of Social Science, University of Tokyo. Her areas of interest include gender, work and unions in a comparative context.

Acknowledgments List of tables and figures Chapter 1. Gendered employment tracks: 'part-time' versus 'life-time' Chapter 2. Conceptualising the feminisation of part-time work in Japan Chapter 3. Daiichi: Introducing the supermarket giant Chapter 4. 'With what I know, I should be a manager...' Chapter 5. 'When I get home, I have to be a mother...' Chapter 6. Power in the Union? Chapter 7. What can be said about part-time work in Japan? Notes Bibliography Index