Full Description
Japanese Women Working provides a wide range of perspectives on the study of working women in Japan over the last century. Contributors address issues of state policy towards and management of women workers, and also provide accounts of the experiences of particular groups of workers: domestic servants, hospital care assistants, textile workers , miners, homeworkers and 'professional' housewives.
The book highlights many of the issues and decisions that have faced working women in Japan, and calls into question the accuracy of the prevailing domestic stereotype of Japanese women. Essays included span a period rapid economic change, and look at Japan as an industrializing country, indicating the importance of the overall economic environment, as well as taking into account cultural factors, in determinig women's position in the labour market.
Bringing together contributions by historians, economists, anthropologists and management specialists from Europe, Japan and the United States, the book underlines the importance of a multidisciplinary approach to the study of women working. It is a major addition to the existing English language literature on Japanese Women, and will make life easier for non-specialists to inform themselves about a critical area of Japanese social and economic development.
Contents
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
