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

National traditions of Japan claim that the head of the family should be a man, and if there is no husband in the family, so the eldest son should be the leader. These family traditions influence the Japanese management too. The percentage of women in senior positions in companies is insignificant due to existing educational, national historical and psychological barriers. The situation of women managers in Japan is connected with the difference in the roles and functions, according to which the authority outside the home belongs to a man.
Thus, still the traditional system of ie had a very strong influence on the Japanese family psychology. Japanese word ie, denoting the family, clan, house, farm, etc., emphasizes the continuity of family lines. In the traditional concept, ie expressed the essence of Japanese group consciousness based on unquestioning obedience to the head of the family. In the modern Japanese society, the company in which all employees are the members of management, headed by the entrepreneur has become the equivalent of ie.
The sense of subordination takes roots in the soul of a Japanese man not from the sermon, but from practical life. He sees that his mother is bowing to her father, his middle brother – to his older brother, his sister – to all brothers, regardless the age. And it is not an empty gesture. This is the recognition of his place and readiness to fulfill obligations arising from this. Caring about the household in Japan has historically been put on the shoulders of women. But the family budget was also under her control. The head of the family was to care about savings for the future. He decides what part of income to spend on current needs. But a woman can manage money that was given to her according to her wish and needs. Used to subordination in the family, the person is used to following its principals in public relations too. The need to constantly emphasize the prestige of the parent creates in the Japanese the sense of personal initiative.
The Civil Code of 1947 only formally gave the Japanese women many rights, but that was still far from full equality. Business people of Japan used to seeing a woman constantly expressing reverence to the man and that is why they couldn’t submit her as a rival or boss, or a businesswoman. In addition, senior management positions require a high level of mobility, which is incompatible with the status of women in traditional Japanese family. custom term paper
Women took one of the most important places in Japan’s economy of 1950’s, but the conditions in which a Japanese woman was placed at the workplace (small wages, poor social support) made it difficult to participate in the labor movement of the country. But by the end of 1960’s, Japanese women became more active in all the areas of social and political life of the country. Each party included an independent women’s support organization; there existed national women’s voluntary organizations. However, more than 70% of them represented women workers’ movements and organizations dealing with women rights in such areas as work and family (“The Context of Women’s Market Careers: A Cross-National Study”, 371).
But in general, a lot of vestiges of the past were kept in Japan, and they were most visible in living and working conditions of Japanese women. Paternalistic system of ie was hanging over the Japanese woman, but its dominance differentiated depending on the affiliation of women to a particular social class. For the majority of women who either did not participate in the labor and political life, or did it just sporadically, the cultural level of the class to which they belonged, was of great importance. Among poor working families in the countryside, the traditional pressures of ie were more massive for a woman than in the urban affluent families.
However, the increasing urbanization and the growth of capitalist relations in the countryside contributed to the disintegration of patriarchal clans and formation of small or so-called nuclear families instead of them. All this led to a rapid reduction of family size: by 1973, the average composition of the Japanese family consisted of 3.45 people, but by 1985 this figure decreased to 3.11 people.
Another process that accompanied the inclusion of women in the economy was the increase of production of pre-processed food products, which eventually formed the second largest industry in Japan, followed by automobile industry. Since the early 1960-ies, the rapid growth of the Japanese economy provided the female labor force with enormous capacity for work that led to major changes in lifestyle and eating habits of Japanese families. Working women did not have time for cooking, and family members preferred to have homemade food. In addition, the increased income made it possible for each family to diverse the tastes and eating habits. These economic and social changes have stimulated the growth of manufacturing industry of pre-processed food (Lee, 184-201).