ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the links between women's changing economic and continuing domestic roles in the latest phases in Japan's macroeconomic history—the period of income doubling and the bubble—and housing asset formation. It explores women's roles and activities in the home and labor market in the fast-growth period of income doubling and the expansion phase of the bubble economy. Women's move into the labor market produced tensions within the married household that centered on the distribution of domestic labor among the adult members of the household. The structure of the Japanese household and the lifetime employment policies of the firm were symbiotic pieces of the social system that operated with the construct of Japan's developmental state. The household system worked in conjunction with the social security and tax system to keep women out of full-time employment and in the "part-time" labor force, which meant that women earned incomes that were far less than men's.
