ABSTRACT
This book has analysed the relationship between gender and globalization in one specific national context: Japan. Japan’s position as an affluent, industrialized liberal democracy, with a distinctive national model of capitalism, means that Japanese women’s experiences of globalization differ from those of women both elsewhere in Asia and in other First World countries. The actions of the Japanese state and Japanese companies have been instrumental in the globalization of production, which is now having reciprocal effects upon the Japanese national model of capitalism. In response to global economic change, the Japanese model of capitalism is being intentionally restructured through company practice and legal change. This restructuring impacts differently upon men and women, as the liberalizing processes associated with globalization interact with specific local institutions, including the ideal of the three-generation family and the position of women in the Japanese national model of capitalism.
