ABSTRACT
At Tozai Bank, men and women were recruited immediately from colleges and uni-versities for two different positions: sogoshoku (integrated track) and ippamhoku or jimushoku (clerical track). Those in sogoshoku were trained to become managers, and ippanshoku employees worked as their assistants. The deceptively gender-neutral terms cloaked the fact that integrated-track employees were almost all male and clerical workers were without exception female. In recent years, the bank recruited 50 to 80 university graduates each year for the integrated positions. Among them, only a handful were female. In addition, 100 to 150 women were hired as clerical workers. About half of the women recruited for clerical positions had university diplomas, often from the same institutions as the men in the integrated positions.
