Equal Employment Opportunity Policy in the United States and Japan

Abstract

This chapter will compare and contrast policy seeking to provide equal opportunity (EO) in the workplace in the United States and Japan. The U.S. policy-making process was among the first, and to date, most successful efforts to create mobility for women seeking higher-level positions largely through the unexpected vehicle of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. We will explore the strategies and tactics that helped to lead to change. In Japan, the process has been much less effective in providing access to the labor market for women, despite the passage of EO legislation in 1985 and subsequent amendments in 1997. Utilizing the resources provided by the convergence of international agencies, treaties and conferences with global feminist movements, Japanese women have pressed their government to conform to new gender equity standards through kansetsu gaiatsu, or indirect external pressure, leading to the enunciation of new rights. The EO law, passed in 1985 in response to international standard setting, was weak, intended to be largely symbolic; but even symbolic law can have an impact on prospects for change in a political context resistant to improvement of women’s labor force options. While employment opportunities for women have not been expanded in most instances, the law’s impact includes changed consciousness of gender inequity, increased recourse to litigation and continuing and expanded mobilization by Japanese women (Gelb, 2000, 386).