by Rosemary L. Hopcroft (@rlhopcro)
In the 1980s, I did some research on the authority attainment of men and women in the workforce in the U.S., with a focus on the factors that cause the sex difference in supervisory and managerial authority. One day I was discussing this research with a Japanese friend. She laughed when she heard about my research into what prevented women from moving into authority positions to the same extent men do, and told me, “in Japan, it would be on a sign on the wall.”
Things have changed in Japan over the last 40 or so years, and the workforce has opened up to women. Nevertheless, it is still a traditional society where women are expected to stop working when they have children, and the male-breadwinner model is firmly entrenched. Japanese women continue to express a strong preference for high income earning capacity in a marriage partner. It is not surprising, then, that men in Japan who are unemployed, underemployed, or low-wage earners are less likely to get married and have children. (In Japanese society, as in most east Asian societies, there is very little childbirth outside of marriage).
