ABSTRACT
The wave of global restructuring triggered by two oil crises and the following long-term reduced economic performance had reached the shores of Japan in the 1980s. As a result, the Japanese economy faced an increasing need to improve its efficiency in order to sustain its competitive edge in the global market. At the same time, Japan undertook another task, which some would argue conflicted with the first. As the UN Decade of Women (1976-85) unfolded, the Japanese government made promises to rectify gender inequality at home and ratify the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination by the end of the decade. Japan’s willingness to conform to international rules can be in part explained by its desire to acquire global leadership.1
To comply with these commitments, the Japanese government needed to correct its most egregious problem regarding gender: the gross inequality between male and female workers in terms of job opportunities, pay, working conditions, and benefits.2 Eradicating gender inequality in the labor force meant a radical change in the ways the Japanese economy operated in the past, in which women were exploited as a cheap and flexible source of labor. This change, if it was implemented, could have increased the labor cost of female workers, which in turn would have offset a restructuring of the economy to sustain global competitiveness.3
