ABSTRACT
Since the 1970s Japanese governments have reduced spending on welfare services to encourage 'families' (read women) to care for children and aged relatives at home rather than at state expense. Due to the widespread unavailability of childcare facilities, many women living in nuclear families can re-enter the workforce only after their last child begins school, and then leave again to care for elderly family members when their carer responsibilities resume. Employers benefit from this workforce that has few employment options because it is locked into domestic responsibilities, and governments benefit by not having to provide these welfare services that it has privatised. Understood in this way, paid work for women must not be separated into fulltime and part-time, but instead should be viewed as an integrated employment pattern existing within lifetime employment practices to complement social, economic and political needs and demands.
