ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter, we saw how the young women managed to settle into the wider social world in the first two years after leaving high school. Their experiences during those years involved a distinctive series of events, and an unmistakable awareness of the status change from being a student to a full-time permanent employee. This process is widely referred to as a transition to shakai-jin (literally, society person), but as we saw earlier, being a shakai-jin is not identical to being an adult. This chapter examines the experience of employment after the initial years. Let me first briefly locate the employment experience of this age group
(19-30 years) in the life cycle of women. After schooling, women move to paid employment; some leave after childbirth while others stay on, and some of those who leave return to work when their children reach school age. While this trend has been observed in many post-industrial societies, Japan displays the sharpest drop in female workforce participation in the middle years. This trend in Japan is referred to, because of its shape, as an ‘M-curve’. There is a strong contrast with social democratic nations in Scandinavia, where women continue working through child-bearing age (see Figure 4.1). But this is not the whole story. Japanese women differ from their sisters in other postindustrial nations in that they rarely return to full-time permanent jobs after childbirth (Yu 2002). The percentage of women in full-time permanent employment does not increase when women return to work after a break (see Figure 5.1). Any jobs that are not full-time and permanent are considered ‘non-standard’
employment. Employment status categories in Japan differ slightly from those in the Anglo-West. First, the distinction between ‘standard’ (or ‘regular’) and ‘non-standard’ employment is the most significant in determining working conditions and in examining employment experiences in Japan. The Japanese labour market assumes full-time permanent employment to be ‘regular’ or ‘standard’ (seiki); it normally offers job security, lifetime employment, wage increases based on length of service and various forms of firm subsidies. Permanent part-time employment or fractional permanent appointments, whereby a worker holds a permanent job, works at a fraction of full-time hours and is paid pro rata, is almost non-existent. Second, non-standard forms
of employment include pâto, haken, shokutaku, keiyaku, rinji koyô and arubaito. With no nationally accepted definition for each of these employment types, their boundaries remain obscure, and different employers, agencies and regions adopt different terms to describe the same category of work (Housemand and Ozawa 1998). Pâto generally refers to employment of less than 35 hours per week, but some ‘part-timers’ work more hours. Haken (literally, dispatching from an agency), shokutaku (literally, asking someone to work unofficially) and keiyaku (contract) are often close to full-time work, but involve fixed short-term contracts and are likely to be exempt from firm subsidies and fringe benefits (Yu 2002: 495). Arubaito and rinji koyô generally refer to casual work paid by the hour. There is a national trend for female workers to move from full-time per-
manent jobs to non-standard employment over their life cycle. Over 70 per cent of those aged 20-24 are in full-time permanent jobs, while 46 per cent of 45-50 year-olds are in non-standard jobs (see Figure 5.2). The trend
reflects the experiences of the women in my study: 73 per cent of those in the 25-29 age group were in standard employment. Other trends among female workers have been a general shift from large-scale companies to small to medium ones, and from white-collar to blue-collar jobs (Shirahase 1995: 2001). To enhance our understanding, I decided to place the employment
experiences of the young women in my study in four categories: (1) at their first company for 11 years; (2) in a permanent full-time job, but not at their first company; (3) agency, contract and part-time workers; and (4) casual employees. These categories are not mutually exclusive, but the young women seemed to make distinctions between them. Other than those who still held their first full-time permanent job, the women passed through different categories of employment status over the 11 years. Yayoi, for example, resigned from a permanent full-time job in order to marry, became a fulltime homemaker, re-entered the workforce via casual work to support the
family, was divorced, worked casually again in a fresh start, and then finally settled into another permanent full-time job. Some women were in two categories simultaneously: for example, having a casual job at weekends while holding a full-time permanent position during the week. My informants’ categories of employment altered over the survey period
(see Table 5.1). In April 1990, one month after graduation from high school, 19 started their first full-time permanent job and two commenced tertiary education (one at a four-year co-ed university, and one at a two-year women’s junior college or tandai). These two women had gained a place through school recommendation rather than taking the well-publicised competitive entrance examinations, as is often the case with mediocre students at non-elite academic high schools or vocational high schools (Okano and Tsuchiya 1999). By late 1997 (aged 25 or 26), the two tertiary students had obtained their first permanent employment after graduation. In early 2001 (aged 29), seven of the group of 21 were still in their first permanent full-time job, and three were in their second standard job. In early 2001, the daily routines of those in paid employment still
centred on the workplace, while those with children had shifted their focus to family life. Others placed priority on their ‘lifestyle’ or recreational activities. The patterns of their work experiences were thus influenced by their private lives. Why did some women stay in their first job, even for as long as a decade? For those who did, what were their future career plans? What was their experience of promotion? Why did some quit their first job? If they did, how did they find another job? Why was non-standard employment such as agency, contract and casual work attractive? Did their perception of agency and casual work change over the years? If so, how and why?
