Japanese Married Women Research Articles

主宰者機構からみた家庭婦人スポーツ活動における「主婦性」の再生産：ママさんバレーボールを事例として

Japanese married women only began participating widely in sports after the Tokyo Olympic Games in 1964. It is often said that sports activities by housewives indicated their liberation from isolated domestic life, thereby promoting gender equality. However, close examination of the systemic characteristics of the ‘Mothers’ Volleyball’ movement (based on its ideology, competition rules and the nature of its routine activities) has shown that these activities possess both a recycling structure that releases housewives from their homes temporarily and reflects the participants’ ‘housewifeliness’, thereby reinforcing the separation of roles between the sexes. In order to clarify by whom and for what purpose this recycling structure was created, this paper focuses on the organizing bodies (sponsor organizations, supporting companies and other bodies that organized and ran the national championships, incorporating the systemic characteristics of Mothers’ Volleyball), analyzing the reasons for their involvement with the movement and the benefits they derived from it. The results show that the periodic reflection of housewifeliness, which housewives needed in order to continue in their role as housewives, was necessary for the economic and social benefit of all the organizations involved, and that this is why these organizations committed themselves to the movement. Participating in sports freed housewives from the routine of daily home life, and activities such as helping to organize competitions promoted their socialization and changed their image from that of ‘isolated housewife’ to ‘sporting housewife’ and further to ‘independent housewife’. The recycling structure mentioned earlier can therefore be thought of as being a directional spiral, and the organizing bodies that ran the national championships can be said to be its drivers. This spiral, which helped to reproduce ‘housewifeliness’, supplied society with good-quality labour for sustaining Japan's rapid economic growth, which was a political issue in the 1970s. The participation of housewives in sports as one of the activities of parent-teacher associations and women's associations can also be said to have contributed to local revitalization, another political topic at that time. Meanwhile, making sports one of their routine, repeated activities made housewives’ lives more satisfying, so that Mothers’ Volleyball acted as a medium for the formation of a conjugate relationship between housewives and society.

Estimating labour supply and time allocation by married Japanese men and unmarried Japanese women

In this article, I estimate the uncompensated and compensated wage elasticities and the income elasticity of time, for married men and unmarried women in Japan. For the purpose of the estimation, I control for the potential endogeneity of the wage and income variables.

家庭婦人スポーツ活動における「主婦性」の再生産：ママさんバレーボールの発展過程と制度特性を中心に

Japanese married women only began participating widely in sports after the Tokyo Olympic Games in 1964. It is often said that participation in sports by housewives symbolized their liberation from isolated domestic life, thereby promoting gender equality. This thesis examines the development of housewives' sports activities and the characteristics of the sports institution, taking “Mums' Volleyball” as the main example, and concludes that those housewives undertook their role without themselves realizing that they were contributing to national economic growth, thereby exaggerating the sexual division of labor. The perpetuation of “housewifeliness” signifies repeated states in which housewives were liberated from their daily household routine, and then were empowered to fulfill their roles as home-makers even more effectively by the sports activities in which they participated. Thus the perpetuation of “housewifeliness” could be expressed as a circular diagram illustrating repeated liberation from “housewifeliness” and its prepetuation. With the development of their sports activities, the image of housewives changed from “isolated” to “cheerful”, and then to “autonomous”, and thus the circle could be considered a spiral diagram.In order to examine the concept of perpetuation of “housewifeliness”, how married women came to be regarded as “housewives” will be outlined, then the reasons why the housewives' sports movement occurred in the 1970s will be discussed. Finally, analysis of the institutional characteristics of “Mum's Volleyball”, such as ideology, rules, facilities for training, etc., will explain how “housewifeliness” was perpetuated.“Mums' Volleyball” was an informal name, and “Housewives' Volleyball” was the official one. Although since the 1970s, the word “housewife” has almost never been used because of its gender inference, it has been used in many cases with reference to sports activities by married women. As the word “housewife”, however, symbolized a good wife and mother, sports activities were accepted and acknowledged by their husbands and their families and, ultimately by society.The housewives who perpetuated “housewifeliness” contributed to the country's economic growth by ensuring that their husbands were always in top condition for work. In the meantime, they were required to have organizational skills, for example, skills for managing their teams, sports associations, and various tournaments in which they participated. Thus the housewives' sports activities could be said to have two faces: one was to free housewives from home-bound chores, encouraging them to have social empowerment, and the other was to accelerate their sexual division of labor as home-makers.

Factors Facilitating Japanese Married Women Entering the Labour Force

This article evaluates factors that facilitate Japanese married women's entrance into the labour force. Logistic multiple regression analyses of a national representative sample revealed six significant factors: Japanese married women eagerly seek employment outside the home who co-reside with their mother-in-law; whose youngest child is 0—10 years old; whose husband's annual income is low; whose husband is non-salaried; who reside in small communities; or who possess liberal attitudes towards traditional marital roles. Working outside the home is an effective strategy adopted by married women in traditional intergenerational families to reduce conflict with in-laws, particularly the mother-in-law. In future studies, the authors hope to analyse the event history of longitudinal data to pinpoint causes of labour force participation of Japanese married women across communities.

Time of One’s Own

Recent theoretical work suggests that the increase in women’s sense of entitlement to leisure has become a key to understanding delay in childbearing in industrialized countries. Using data from the Japanese Panel Study of Consumer Life, the author examines the relationship between leisure time and childbearing among Japanese married women in a recent cohort who delayed childbearing beyond age 25. Results suggest that employment is a strong predictor of nonchildbearing. Controlling for work hours and other sociodemographic variables, married women who spend more leisure time are less likely than their counterparts who spend less leisure time to become a mother 2 years later. Among those who are employed, leisure time, but neither work hours nor occupation, is related to nonchildbearing. These results indicate that Japanese married women who have greater interests in leisure postpone childbearing. Many of them participate in the labor force perhaps because of the leisure opportunities employment provides.

Co‐residency living arrangement as a factor to facilitate labor force participation of Japanese women: community level analyses of Japanese families

Significant regional variations by prefecture level exist for the family and the elderly in Japan. This suggests that the Japanese family, and aging society as well, must be studied carefully with close attention to the socio‐cultural characteristics specific to each region and community (Kumagai, 1997a, 1997b). Therefore, it is essential to move the unit of analysis down to the community level rather than the national or even prefecture (regional) level. Social practices and cultural characteristics specific to each region and community are difficult to measure and quantify. Upon careful examination of Japanese married women in the traditional extended family, the theoretical hypothesis was postulated: Whether in urban or rural regions, regardless of the place of residence, married women living with their mother‐in‐law are likely to seek work outside the home. A national random sample of 3,662 Japanese women was analyzed. In conducting Chi‐square significance tests, this hypothesis is proved to be valid. The most striking finding of this study is that working outside the home seems to be one of the effective alternatives adopted by married women in the traditional generational family household. When son’s wives are in the labor force, it is most likely to reduce intergenerational conflict, a negative aspect of co‐residence living arrangements. In other words, working outside the home helps to minimize intergenerational conflict with in‐laws ‐mothers‐in‐law, in particular). Thus, the qualitative analysis of the family can provide effective indicators for the in‐depth analysis of Japanese families. It is, therefore, necessary to propose welfare policies for the elderly in the same manner, rather than simply looking at national average statistics.

Estimation of the labor participation and wage equation model of Japanese married women by the simultaneous maximum likelihood method

Econometric models of female labor participation and wage equations have been used extensively. Sample selection biases in the estimations of such models must be taken into account since women's wages cannot be observed unless they are working. Conventional estimation methods have not been sufficiently examined and may, therefore, result in misleading policy implications. This paper estimates labor participation and wage equations of Japanese married women through conventional methods, and for the first time, through a new, efficient, simultaneous maximum likelihood estimator that uses data from the “Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers” conducted by the Institute of Household Economy. J. Japanese Int. Economies 18 (3) (2004) 301–315.

The Causal Effect of Family Structure on Labor Force Participation among Japanese Married Women

This paper finds that after controlling for the endogeneity offamily structure, coresidence with one's own parents or in-laws has a significant positive effect on Japanese married women's labor force participation. This suggests that coresidence allows married women to share the burden of household work with their parents or in-laws, thus leading to the increased probability of labor force participation. It is also found that married women are more likely to reside with parents-in-law if their husband is the eldest son. This suggests the persistence of the traditional Japanese value that the eldest son is more responsible for family matters.

The Effect of Higher Education on the Rate of Labor-Force Exit for Married Japanese Women

This study investigates the impact of higher education on the rates of married Japanese women leaving the labor force. The data is drawn from interviews with 819 mothers of fourth and fifth grade students who participated in the School District Survey conducted in Central Japan. The subsample used for the analyses consists of 587 currently married women between the ages of 30 and 49 who have at least one child. Discrete-time logit models were used to estimate the effects of education on the risk of labor-force exit as defined by labor-force withdrawal lasting one year or longer. The controlling variables include women's wages, firm size/type, work status, and the husband's education, firm size/type, and income. The results show that in the early stages of career development, university graduates have a higher probability of leaving the labor force. In the later stages, however, university graduates are more likely to stay in the labor force. Marital status and parental status do not affect the employment decisions of university graduates as strongly as they affect those of high-school graduates. The occupational profiles of the highly educated stayers are represented by the teaching profession and civil servants, indicating that the change in the patterns of Japanese female labor-force participation behavior is still limited to a small number of occupations.

The Effect of Higher Education on the Rate of Labor-Force Exit for Married Japanese Women

The Effect of Higher Education on the Rate of Labor-Force Exit for Married Japanese Women

Married Women’s Gender-Role Attitudes and Social Stratification

:Using latent-class analysis and related regression models, this article identifies the relations between latent classes of gender-role attitude and status/class characteristics among married Japanese women and married American women, and compares the results for the two countries. For Japanese women, three latent classes of gender-role attitudes are identified: traditionality, the nontraditionality-antiwork combination, and the nontraditionality-prowork combination. Three classes are also identified for American women: nontraditionality, the traditionality-compatibility combination, and the traditionality-incompatibility combination. In each case, the analysis clarifies how the status/class attributes of married women, their husbands, and their fathers affect latent-class membership. Theoretical implications of the findings are also discussed.

Wage Differentials and Labour Supply of Married Women in Japan: Part‐time and Informal Sector Work Opportunities

This paper studies the pattern of labour supply of Japanese married women. The study develops and tests a discrete work choice model with a differing level of fixed cost of work and equalizing wage differential s. This accounts for differences in work characteristics of the regular status and part-time status work at firms, the family and self-employment. A 20 to 30 per cent hourly wage differential was obser ved between work categories with control on skills, region and other variables. Different effects are studied of the numbe r and ages of children, a grandmother's presence and the wife's educational attainments on the category of work selected. The data employed come from The Occupational History and Mobility Survey of Women 1983 (OHMS), conducted by the National Institute for Vocational and Occupational Research, and allow detailed wage regression and consideration of different work categories which were not feasible in previous works. Empirical regulari ties of the Japanese labour market, such as the absence of growth in labour participation for mothers with small children, are better explained when work categories are dealt with separately.

Work-Family Conflict and the Stress-Buffering Effects of Husband Support and Coping Behavior among Japanese Married Working Women

In an attempt to explore work-family conflict and the stress-buffering effects of husband support and coping behavior, parental demands for the care of young children, work-family conflict, husband support, coping behavior (work-role and family-role redefinition), and life strain were assessed for 131 Japanese married working women. Hierarchical multiple regressions indicated that parental demands were related to work-family conflict, which in turn was related to life strain, thereby indicating a causal chain linking parental demands, work-family conflicts, and life strain. Husband support buffered the relationship between parental demands and work-family conflict. Family-role redefinition buffered the relationship between work-family conflict and life strain. Theoretical and practical implications for work-family conflict and coping behavior of married working women are discussed.

Territoriality in the house and its relationship to the use of rooms and the psychological well-being of japanese married women

The present study aims to reduce the gap between theoretical and empirical work regarding territoriality in domestic spaces and its psychological meanings. Japanese married women responded to a questionnaire on territorial recognition of domestic space, use of rooms, and symptoms of psychological maladaptation. The results showed that most of them had their own controllable and personalized spaces in the home while only a few had exclusive spaces. Subjects tended to go to the place under their control in order to be alone, to spend free time and to entertain friends. Results also indicated that those who had controllable space showed better adaptation than those who did not. However, neither personalized nor exclusive spaces related to psychological well-being. Thus, the present study revealed that territoriality and the controllability of space in particular had a relationship to the use of rooms and well-being in Japanese women.

Women's Career Development and Divorce Risk in Japan

ABSTRACT In Japan, divorce rates have more than doubled since the mid‐1960s, and female paid employment has increased rapidly in the past few decades. By applying a conventional economic model of labor force participation to micro‐level data gathered from a nationally representative sample survey, this paper shows that Japanese married women who have contemplated divorcing their husbands are more likely to participate in the workforce as full‐time paid employees. This finding suggests that an increasing risk of divorce has made a substantial contribution to the fast rise in Japanese women's participation in paid employment, particularly full‐time work.

Dilemmas and accomodations of married japanese women in white-collar employment

In the 1970s much of the literature on the role of married Japanese women presented a picture that roles should be clearly demarcated and segregated by gender. According to this ideal a man's main ...

Using Aggregate Data to Estimate the Part-Time and Full-Time Work Behavior of Japanese Women

This paper analyzes the interdependencies among the labor force participation decisions of married women in Japan. These decisions are working part-time, working full-time, being unemployed (in the labor market but unable to find work), and not participating. We focus on the interdependency between the decision to work part-time and the decision to work full-time. We obtain positive own-wage elasticities for full-time and part-time participation, with part-time labor force participation of Japanese married women being substantially more elastic than that of their full-time counterparts. We also find that the elasticity of full-time participation in response to the part-time wage is greater than the elasticity of part-time participation in response to the full-time wage.