Diversity and inclusion

Abstract

“Diversity and inclusion” has become a trendy term in recent times. This chapter discusses the history of the human race as a starting point to explain why diversity and inclusion are crucial issues in contemporary society. Women's status in Japanese society is, however, the lowest of all developed countries. In any case, gender discrimination has been nurtured in Japan over the 120 years of modernization since the Meiji Civil Code established the household system and in step with the employment practices established after World War II. The idiosyncratic employment practices that became established in postwar Japan—such as the mass graduate recruitment system, lifetime employment, age-based seniority, standard retirement age, and enterprise labor unions—are also intertwined in complex ways with the gendered division of labor. Between the period when Japan regained its sovereignty after the war and the bursting of the economic bubble some four decades later, Japan achieved high growth, averaging over 7% per year.