Gender roles: The roles of wife and mother

This chapter focuses on female gender roles, particularly the roles of wife and mother. There are two main reasons for this. First, the role of mother is the one that determines gender role most decisively in Japan and at the same time heavily restricts women’s behaviour (Ehara 2000; Okamoto 2000). Despite rapid technological improvements, which have reduced women’s housework hours (Ministry of Health and Welfare 1996), child-rearing still remains overwhelmingly in the hands of mothers (Jolivet 1997; Funabashi 2000; Ministry of Health and Welfare 1998). Not only men but also women strongly adhere to, or are pressured into, the idea that mothers should be the ones to raise their children, and this limits their behaviour. Second, we are inclined to believe that more Japanese women advanced into the labour force after the war. However, this is a fallacy. As Ochiai (1997: 14) points out, the female labour participation rate, in fact, decreased for three decades after the war. The idea of a strict household division of ‘men as breadwinners and women as homemakers’ actually became more popular and acceptable in the era of rapid economic growth – the late 1950s to 1973. One of the main contributing factors to this could be the break-up of the household as a production unit, which restricted the role of the female to either worker or housewife, whereas before they could perform both duties within the household unit (Ochiai 1997). I would argue that the nature of the productive labour that women engage in has changed, and that this has forced them to select between the mutually exclusive roles of worker and housewife.1 This may suggest another reason for the increase in delay or avoidance of marriage because women foresee difficulties in carrying out both productive and reproductive labour. At the same time, the high rate of economic growth enjoyed by Japan from the late 1950s to the early 1970s made it more feasible for married women to stay at home and focus on reproductive work because it was easier to support a family with a single wage.