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Once considered to be almost entirely middle class, Japanese society seems to be fracturing today, as the rift between rich and poor becomes increasingly pronounced. Past research on social inequality, however, has focused exclusively on men and families. In The New Paradox for Japanese Women: Greater Choice, Greater Inequality, renowned economist Tachibanaki Toshiaki looks at social divisions among Japanese women. What kinds of disparities do women in Japan face today? What role do a woman’s family background, education, and decisions regarding marriage and children play in determining her place in society? Is there a social gap between full-time homemakers and working women? What about women in the workplace: do women in clerical or part-time positions enjoy social parity with those on the management track? Providing an in-depth analysis based on statistical data, this timely book offers penetrating insights into these issues and suggests remedies to help Japan grapple with this growing social dilemma.
内容（「BOOK」データベースより）
『女女格差』英語版。女性の人生でのさまざまな格差を検証し、その差が合理的なものなのか不公平なものなのかを分析する。
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As he has in earlier books, the author (TT) shows an outspoken concern about the rise of inequality in Japan. Here, his particular focus is on how inequality affects Japanese women. There's no doubt that TT is more sympathetic to the problems facing women in Japanese society than are most other Japanese men of his generation, born during the 1940s. Unfortunately, he combines this with Chicago School economics and some other disconcerting myopias, with the frequent result that his recommendations for change either don't go far enough or are slightly bizarre. Some of his logical inferences also are weak or flawed.
The book's main strength is its wealth of econometric and survey information about the social situation and attitudes of Japanese women, through the early years of the 21st century. TT also explains a number of relevant private and public policies, such as the managerial/clerical dual-track career system for women (but not men) in large corporations, and the current tax and social security incentives for married women severely to limit their number of working hours and pay. It's not easy to find such good explanations of these institutions in English.
TT is often direct about offering his own opinions. The high point of TT's advocacy is in Chapter 8, comparing regular vs. nonregular employment in Japan. He's quite critical of the precariousness of the situation facing nonregular employees, and even the unreasonable working-hour expectations facing male regular employees. (The perceived unfairness of the situation of nonregular employees -- albeit especially male ones -- played a big role in the rejection of the LDP in the 2009 election, subsequent to the 2008 Japanese publication of this book.)
Characteristically, though, TT's recommendations fall either short or flat. After detailing how nonregular employees face unjustifiable gaps both in wages and in social protection, he concludes by calling for legislation "to make the hourly wage the same for full-time and part-time workers who are performing the same work" -- without saying anything about equalizing social protection benefits (@264). Concerning the two-track system, he describes how it was corporations' response to equal opportunity legislation, and to rising education levels among women; then he states "If these two reasons exist today, there is no need to consider abolishing the system" (@210). Never does he question whether the corporations' response to these social changes was *reasonable in the first place* (a negative answer to which might indeed argue in favor of scrapping the 2-track system). The notion of modifying or eliminating the social security and tax incentives that push married women into insecure part-time work is never even mentioned (though the elimination of these incentives was to become a campaign promise, as yet unfulfilled, of the DPJ in 2009).
The book's low point is Chapter 5, entitled "Children and a Woman's Life". TT invokes Chicago economist Gary Becker's analysis of why people have children, all of which involve increasing the parents' "utility" (@143ff). Matters don't improve when TT considers "what percentage of a child is private property and what percentage is public assets" -- the latter in the sense of "[b]ridges and roads" (@165). And they hit rock bottom with TT's two proposals for raising the birthrate in Japan: discouraging abortions and encouraging out-of-wedlock births (@163ff).
The issue of children highlights the striking contrast between TT's point of view and that of Europeans such as Gosta Esping-Andersen, especially in the latter's " Trois lecons sur l'Etat-providence " (Seuil 2006; expanded in English as "The Unfinished Revolution," Polity 2009). Esping-Andersen makes a convincing argument that universally available child daycare is central to attacking the problems of women's and children's poverty, of education, and of aging society -- especially for increasing the birth-rate. (For Esping-Andersen, children are a "positive collective good," not a "public asset.") But TT mentions child daycare only briefly and in passing, and entirely ignores the issues of poverty and aging. These omissions are especially surprising, since, among other reasons, in Japan (i) women often are expected to quit their jobs in order to provide home-care for seniors in their or their husband's family, and (ii) a disproportionate number of the elderly poor are widows -- to say nothing of the fact that the aging of Japan has been a national preoccupation for more than a decade. Of course Esping-Andersen is absent from the list of references, which, aside from Gary Becker's 1981 book on the family, is devoid of any other non-Japanese source, as well.
The book contains many residues of what might be called the "conventional sexism" of TT's generation. The most grating of these is TT's tendency to call women who have attended the most elite universities "ultra-educated" (@81ff). Men who have attended the same universities are called "highly educated" (@84), whereas "highly educated" women are those who've attended "non-elite" 4-year universities (@id.). The connotation here is that women who graduate from University of Tokyo and similar schools have somehow gone "beyond" where they ought to go, while it's more natural for men to go to these schools. Similarly, women are underrepresented in the transport industry because "driving vehicles" is "natural[ly]" a "male domain" (@16). Women's educational choices are also blamed: because of their comparative strength in reading and the humanities,they "do not focus so strongly on courses that will come in handy in company work" (@26, 73-74). TT never pauses to ask who decides what will come in "handy" (namely, men); he might have considered such examples as Siegmund Warburg, whose highly successful mid-20th Century investment bank preferentially hired candidates who had read in Classics (Latin and Greek) at top universities, and avoided hiring those with an economics background (see, e.g., Ron Chernow's "The Warburgs").
Unfortunately, the book is also marred by some faulty inferences from data. The most serious of these are in Chapter 8, in TT's analysis of Table 8-2, entitled women's educational attainment by employment type. For example, the table shows that junior college graduates make up 25.4% of female hired dispatched workers and 30.3% of female registered dispatched workers; TT concludes that "female junior college graduates are mainly engaged in dispatched work" (@237). In doing so, he ignores a previous table (8-1) that shows the relative proportions of women working within each employment category. According to that table, only 3.4% of all working women are engaged in any type of dispatched work, whereas 44.4% of all women have permanent jobs and 42.5% work part-time. If you combine the data in Tables 8-1 and 8-2, you discover that over 50% of junior college graduates have regular employment, another 30% or so work part-time, and only 4.5-5.0% of them engage in dispatched work. Similarly, although it's true when TT says "the higher a woman's educational level, the more likely she is to be engaged in dispatched work" (@238), this is a bit misleading: only about 5% of university grads engage in dispatched work, while more than 10x as many have regular employment, and another 25% or so work part-time. (TT's error should have been pretty easy to spot: if you look at Table 8-2, you'll see that most of the columns representing the different educational levels total up to > 100%; TT was drawing inferences as if they totaled to unity.)
Another non sequitur: 40% of wives indicate that would not mind being single their whole lives, while 90% of single women want to marry; "comparing" these data yields "quite a strong affirmation of the single life" (@121). And concerning survey data in which roughly 50% of both *never-married* women and *never-married* men say they expect the wife to resign when she has children and then to return to work after the kids are grown up, he remarks, "We can thus assess this life path to be a desirable one that increases the couple's level of happiness" (@160-162) -- even though he doesn't present any data from actual married couples who have attempted this path.
While I haven't compared the book to the Japanese original, from an English reader's perspective the translation by Mary Foster is outstanding: it flows as if the book were originally written in English and for the most part avoids any stilted, academic sound. The hardcover is also very nicely produced, printed on high-quality paper. The index, however, could be better: for example, if you're looking for references to the tax and social security incentives I mentioned above, it won't help you at all to find them. In summary, this is a useful book to read on the topics of inequality and women's issues in Japan -- maybe even indispensable if you lack reading fluency in academic Japanese -- but prepare to feel frustrated often by the author's point of view.
The book's main strength is its wealth of econometric and survey information about the social situation and attitudes of Japanese women, through the early years of the 21st century. TT also explains a number of relevant private and public policies, such as the managerial/clerical dual-track career system for women (but not men) in large corporations, and the current tax and social security incentives for married women severely to limit their number of working hours and pay. It's not easy to find such good explanations of these institutions in English.
TT is often direct about offering his own opinions. The high point of TT's advocacy is in Chapter 8, comparing regular vs. nonregular employment in Japan. He's quite critical of the precariousness of the situation facing nonregular employees, and even the unreasonable working-hour expectations facing male regular employees. (The perceived unfairness of the situation of nonregular employees -- albeit especially male ones -- played a big role in the rejection of the LDP in the 2009 election, subsequent to the 2008 Japanese publication of this book.)
Characteristically, though, TT's recommendations fall either short or flat. After detailing how nonregular employees face unjustifiable gaps both in wages and in social protection, he concludes by calling for legislation "to make the hourly wage the same for full-time and part-time workers who are performing the same work" -- without saying anything about equalizing social protection benefits (@264). Concerning the two-track system, he describes how it was corporations' response to equal opportunity legislation, and to rising education levels among women; then he states "If these two reasons exist today, there is no need to consider abolishing the system" (@210). Never does he question whether the corporations' response to these social changes was *reasonable in the first place* (a negative answer to which might indeed argue in favor of scrapping the 2-track system). The notion of modifying or eliminating the social security and tax incentives that push married women into insecure part-time work is never even mentioned (though the elimination of these incentives was to become a campaign promise, as yet unfulfilled, of the DPJ in 2009).
The book's low point is Chapter 5, entitled "Children and a Woman's Life". TT invokes Chicago economist Gary Becker's analysis of why people have children, all of which involve increasing the parents' "utility" (@143ff). Matters don't improve when TT considers "what percentage of a child is private property and what percentage is public assets" -- the latter in the sense of "[b]ridges and roads" (@165). And they hit rock bottom with TT's two proposals for raising the birthrate in Japan: discouraging abortions and encouraging out-of-wedlock births (@163ff).
The issue of children highlights the striking contrast between TT's point of view and that of Europeans such as Gosta Esping-Andersen, especially in the latter's " Trois lecons sur l'Etat-providence " (Seuil 2006; expanded in English as "The Unfinished Revolution," Polity 2009). Esping-Andersen makes a convincing argument that universally available child daycare is central to attacking the problems of women's and children's poverty, of education, and of aging society -- especially for increasing the birth-rate. (For Esping-Andersen, children are a "positive collective good," not a "public asset.") But TT mentions child daycare only briefly and in passing, and entirely ignores the issues of poverty and aging. These omissions are especially surprising, since, among other reasons, in Japan (i) women often are expected to quit their jobs in order to provide home-care for seniors in their or their husband's family, and (ii) a disproportionate number of the elderly poor are widows -- to say nothing of the fact that the aging of Japan has been a national preoccupation for more than a decade. Of course Esping-Andersen is absent from the list of references, which, aside from Gary Becker's 1981 book on the family, is devoid of any other non-Japanese source, as well.
The book contains many residues of what might be called the "conventional sexism" of TT's generation. The most grating of these is TT's tendency to call women who have attended the most elite universities "ultra-educated" (@81ff). Men who have attended the same universities are called "highly educated" (@84), whereas "highly educated" women are those who've attended "non-elite" 4-year universities (@id.). The connotation here is that women who graduate from University of Tokyo and similar schools have somehow gone "beyond" where they ought to go, while it's more natural for men to go to these schools. Similarly, women are underrepresented in the transport industry because "driving vehicles" is "natural[ly]" a "male domain" (@16). Women's educational choices are also blamed: because of their comparative strength in reading and the humanities,they "do not focus so strongly on courses that will come in handy in company work" (@26, 73-74). TT never pauses to ask who decides what will come in "handy" (namely, men); he might have considered such examples as Siegmund Warburg, whose highly successful mid-20th Century investment bank preferentially hired candidates who had read in Classics (Latin and Greek) at top universities, and avoided hiring those with an economics background (see, e.g., Ron Chernow's "The Warburgs").
Unfortunately, the book is also marred by some faulty inferences from data. The most serious of these are in Chapter 8, in TT's analysis of Table 8-2, entitled women's educational attainment by employment type. For example, the table shows that junior college graduates make up 25.4% of female hired dispatched workers and 30.3% of female registered dispatched workers; TT concludes that "female junior college graduates are mainly engaged in dispatched work" (@237). In doing so, he ignores a previous table (8-1) that shows the relative proportions of women working within each employment category. According to that table, only 3.4% of all working women are engaged in any type of dispatched work, whereas 44.4% of all women have permanent jobs and 42.5% work part-time. If you combine the data in Tables 8-1 and 8-2, you discover that over 50% of junior college graduates have regular employment, another 30% or so work part-time, and only 4.5-5.0% of them engage in dispatched work. Similarly, although it's true when TT says "the higher a woman's educational level, the more likely she is to be engaged in dispatched work" (@238), this is a bit misleading: only about 5% of university grads engage in dispatched work, while more than 10x as many have regular employment, and another 25% or so work part-time. (TT's error should have been pretty easy to spot: if you look at Table 8-2, you'll see that most of the columns representing the different educational levels total up to > 100%; TT was drawing inferences as if they totaled to unity.)
Another non sequitur: 40% of wives indicate that would not mind being single their whole lives, while 90% of single women want to marry; "comparing" these data yields "quite a strong affirmation of the single life" (@121). And concerning survey data in which roughly 50% of both *never-married* women and *never-married* men say they expect the wife to resign when she has children and then to return to work after the kids are grown up, he remarks, "We can thus assess this life path to be a desirable one that increases the couple's level of happiness" (@160-162) -- even though he doesn't present any data from actual married couples who have attempted this path.
While I haven't compared the book to the Japanese original, from an English reader's perspective the translation by Mary Foster is outstanding: it flows as if the book were originally written in English and for the most part avoids any stilted, academic sound. The hardcover is also very nicely produced, printed on high-quality paper. The index, however, could be better: for example, if you're looking for references to the tax and social security incentives I mentioned above, it won't help you at all to find them. In summary, this is a useful book to read on the topics of inequality and women's issues in Japan -- maybe even indispensable if you lack reading fluency in academic Japanese -- but prepare to feel frustrated often by the author's point of view.
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