Since former Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo announced his “Womenomics” initiative to increase the number of Japanese women in the workplace, the number of married working women aged 25-54 has risen from 58% in 2000 to 71% in 2016.... more
Since former Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo announced his “Womenomics” initiative to increase the number of Japanese women in the workplace, the number of married working women aged 25-54 has risen from 58% in 2000 to 71% in 2016. However, most of these women are not engaged in career-track jobs; the number of women in executive or managerial positions, as well as high level government jobs, lags well behind that of other industrialized nations. This is partly attributed to the fact that Japanese working women who are married with children still bear the brunt of childcare, housekeeping, and caring for elderly relatives. Japanese teachers, especially, work long hours, and have little time for career development activities which might lead to advancement. Although outsourcing at least some domestic tasks might improve Japanese women teacher’s lives, few do so. In this paper, we examine the results of a survey on attitudes toward hiring help to better understand why female educators in Japan tend to not outsource domestic work, and suggest the development of an app which might help those who are seeking to find and employ domestic workers.
