Custom research paper on The contribution of women to the massive expansion of the Japanese economy in the 1950/60’s

Introduction
The economic situation in postwar Japan was extremely difficult. Even though its industrial and technological base had been not so greatly affected during the war, the Japanese economy was still on the verge of collapse. The economy was effected and exhausted by the long war of aggression; major cities and many factories were in ruins (at the beginning of 1946 the industrial output was 14% of the average pre-war level). The population was impoverished and felt the lack of basic necessities: food, shelter and work. Without important natural resources and colonial sources of income, Japan seemed to become a third-rate country. Ironically, it was a crushing defeat of Japan in World War II that gave a powerful impetus to the socio-economic development and led to the elimination of many economic and political obstacles that were hindering free and natural development of the capitalist mode of production, market mechanism and integration of Japan into the world economy communication (Forsberg, 112).
The defeat of Japan in World War II led to the removing of feudal system, realizing a land reform, undermined the rule of warlords and military bureaucracy, limited the influence of older, “classic” zaibatsu, which had been formally disbanded and put Japan on the path of bourgeois-democratic development.
The reform of the Japanese economy in the postwar period was carried out with the active intervention of the United States and under the control of the occupational administration headed by General Douglas MacArthur. During the six years a series of systemic changes was made: the currency reform (even if not very successfully) in 1946, actions to move the economy out of crisis (1946 – 1947); the reform of labor relations and forms of land ownership (1947 – 1949); de-monopolization of the economy (1947 – 1949); conversion of military enterprises; fiscal reform, stabilization of monetary and exchange rate (1949 – 1950) and tax reform (1949 – 1950). The basis of the postwar Japanese economic model was the concept of Keynesianism, which gave the state the role of the guiding force of economic development, as well as foreign economic orientation (Flath, 96).
Since the mid 1950s the Japanese economy entered a period of high rates of economic growth, which lasted for more than 15 years. Only from 1953 to 1960, the industrial output increased by 2.6 times. In total, in the 1951/68’s the average annual growth rate of industrial output amounted to 14.6% against 5.5% of the entire capitalist world, including 4.5% for the U.S., which allowed talking about the “Japanese economic miracle”. During 1960`s, Japan’s volume of GNP surpassed Italy and France, then England and Germany in 1968 and took the second place in the capitalist world after the United States. The share of Japan in the world capitalist production reached 13.3% by 1970 (Forsberg, 65).custom research paper
One of the most important factors in creating the “economic miracle” of Japan was its human resource. While in 1948, Japan’s population was 80 million, including 35 million people of working population, by 1953 the total population raised up to 87 million people with 45 million working people, a significant part of which was presented by women who finally got an opportunity to get included into the labor market processes (Kravdal, 854 – 873).

Socio-economic position of women in postwar Japan
The economical and social processes in post-war Japan left a visible mark on the living conditions of the Japanese people. The Japanese woman of the 1950s faced the need to enter the labor market. The equality between man and woman proclaimed at that times opened new areas of activity for Japanese women. The Civil Code of the 1947 formally gave women a lot of rights and freedoms: women had a right to vote, to work in various social organizations; the Code also mandated the equal remuneration for men and women and some other democratic aspects (Lee, 382 – 401).
Previously, a woman possessed a secondary position in the society, and the range of her responsibilities and interests was limited to her family, and exceptionally some areas of art (flower arrangement, music, and tea ceremony). Now, a woman was able to find burdensome work “from bell to bell” that did not cause much stress and was bringing enough money for personal expenses. The involvement of women in such a model was previously difficult because women were not represented in some of the class levels at all, and in some of them were represented just marginally.
An important role in large-scale restructuring of the Japanese economy was played by the increasing intensity of labor, particularly favorable conditions for the production of surplus value. Meanwhile, the female labor force obtained a peculiar position in labor relations in Japan. The management of many companies considered female staff just as a ”consumable item”. Women were usually used as charwomen and part-time workers. Charwomen were often served as some kind of valve by the administration of companies. In unfavorable economical conditions, this category of workers first came under reduction; working women were often deprived of the benefits they could get after retirement; there was a replacement of middle-aged workers by young people with low wages. The struggle of the Japanese trade unions for better conditions of female workers was blocked by national legislation. In the government statistics, women were held as day laborer housewives, that is why when they lost their jobs; they were not included to the number of the unemployed. This simple technique allowed keeping the official unemployment rate low.
Wages of Japanese workers were kept at a lower level than in the developed countries. In late 1950’s, they got seven times less than American workers. In 1950/70`s, GDP growth in Japan outpaced the average wage by 1.8 times, while only by 1.4 times in the U.S. But the average payment of Japanese women was even twice lower than that of men, because women usually worked only until marriage. If they returned back to work after the marriage, then, as it was noted above, they were taken only for a temporary or part-time work (Flath, 109).
However, after the admission of Japanese women to the education system at the beginning of the 20th century, they started obtaining professional management education, develop and expand their professional qualifications, filling vacancies not only in wage employment but also creating their own companies, mainly in trade and services. Women succeeded in the struggle for equal opportunity, and it was expressed in their participation in the further development of business, especially in small businesses. After all, the contribution of women to business in Japan can not be called significant, which is connected with national and historical traditions and attitudes towards women. In the next 50 years after the economic miracle, Japanese women were able to occupy only 9% of top-management positions. It should be mentioned that men don’t obey women managers in Japan. The women rule only women’s collectives (Macnaughtan, 45).