I'm taking a sociology class at Pomona this semester called Population & the Environment. For our final projects, one student presented on Japan's aging population, and brought up the idea of increasing the number of women in the Japanese workforce.
Japanese PM Shinzo Abe set a goal that 30% of the top executive positions in the country would be held by women by 2020—the program was called "Womenomics." Last year, however, his administration had to lower the percentage target to 7%, because it just wasn't working.
Many attribute this failure to the fact that women's and men's social roles are still resolutely held in Japan, and women are expected to stay at home with children. However, I looked into it a little more, and this doesn't seem to be entirely true—I found another article showing that women's (15-64) participation in the workforce in Japan is greater than that of the United States.
The corporate world in Japan is not just a boys' club - it's an old men's club. In my opinion, there might just be a prejudice that young people can't achieve positions of executive management—let alone women getting up at the top, which might be unheard of, given the existence of "salarymen" as such a defining job term.
I think it's interesting to see how a governmental action could affect decisions in the private sector. I'm not too sure yet what the consequences or incentives are for achieving Abe's goal, but I don't think anything like this would ever happen in the US. If it did, do you guys think it would work?
It's interesting that Japan tried to set a gender policy for business executives. I agree that this probably wouldn't work in the U.S. Quotas/incentives in any field (think about backlash to affirmative action) are seen by many as fundamentally unamerican. Even the idea that the government should meddle with the hiring processes of private companies would likely ruffle feathers here. In a meritocracy it seems unfair to give any particular group official advantages or incentives. Of course, the answer to that argument is that quotas are remedial--meant to balance out the unofficial incentives society has given to the dominant group. It may be the case that a mix of American "values," fidelity to business autonomy, and exceptionalism, means that we cannot adequately incentivize minority groups to achieve higher posts in government or business.:(
ReplyDeleteI agree with Steph as well. This idea is "fundamentally unamerican" and is relatively radical since the US doesn't have any quota systems in government either. Countries that already have quota systems have a more likely chance of having this gender policy in business. Also, the fact that few women, who would have a greater chance of supporting this type of policy in business, are in government makes the likelihood of this existing in the US is very slim.
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