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Recommended: Inequality of pay in gender
Introduction
Some countries, including Japan, have been introduced with the OECD proposals and equal pay legislation to guarantee ‘equal pay for equal work’ and to decrease the gender wage gap. However, there is still a significant gap between the pay rates of men and women in Japan. It is important to identify the different factors that cause this wage differential in order to recognize why the gender wage gap has continued.
The gender gap in Japan is striking since there is a relatively lack of access to different extent of autonomy and authority among Japanese women. This is caused by the cultural traditions of the role of women in the society. In Japan, the idea of women staying at home has great appeal even among women (Ishida, 1995).
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Unstable work and low salaries has been caused by deregulation. In 2007, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) conducted a survey and found out that during the early twenties or the early working lives of men and women, their salaries are comparatively equal. However, the wage gap increases as men and women reached their mid-twenties. The gap reached its peak when men and women were around the age fifty.
The female-male wage gap persists to be present in Japan. Wage discrepancies have slowly reduced in Japan since 1986, which is around 59.7 percent and reached 69.8 percent in 2009 according to the survey made by MHLW ( (Rodosho, 2011).
The gender-specific wage gap is caused by the fact that lesser number of women gets promoted as compared to men in terms of higher levels of management despite the number of years in service to a corporation. For men, the number of years they have worked for a company is highly correlated to the position they get in higher administration (Assmann, 2014).
On the Perspective of Labor
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The labour market in Japan is presumed for its ‘lasting employment system’ where workers spend a great fraction of their profession working for a particular corporation or a single industrial company (Hori & Nohara, 2006).
The Japanese ‘internal labour market’ has a number of characteristic features. There exists a tightly set border between white-collar and blue-collar workers in Japan in terms of the professional category. This border is rather unyielding and impermeable. Hardly any blue-collar employees can become white-collar employees in the course of their working years (Hori & Nohara, 2006).
All class of workers in Japan are expected to get the same pay system and are frequently enclosed by a communal agreement founded on a single-status section. (Hori & Nohara, 2006). University graduates in Japan, thus, received salaries or begin at the lowest level offered on the entire labor market. Moreover, the pay levels of employees are always less than those who experienced manual work until they reach 35 years of age. There is a slow rate of progress on the pay scale, and this method does not constantly promote risk-taking or
In 1887, during the Meiji period in Japan, multiple laws existed that limited the abilities and rights of women. For example, women did not have inheritance rights or suffrage. Women were not trained for careers and therefore could not obtain work that interested them. It was in this era of Japanese history that a rigid and inflexible class system was in place and these conditions continued...
Women have faced gender wage discrimination for decades. The gender pay gap is the difference between what a male and a female earns. It happens when a man and a woman standing next to each other doing the same job for the same number of hours get paid different salaries. On average, full-time working- women earn just “77 cents for every dollar a man earn.” When you compare a woman and a man doing the same job, “the pay gap narrows to 81 percent (81%)” (Rosin). Fifty-one years ago, in order to stop the gender gap discrimination, Congress enacted the Equal Pay Act of 1963. The act states that all women should receive “equal pay for equal work”. Unfortunately, even in 2014 the gender pay gap persists and even at the highest echelons of the corporate; therefore, the equal pay act is a failure.
Most of the historians agree that the US was the major reason for the revival of Japanese economy. However, there are historians who think differently. They credit Japan’s success to the following factors. The jewels of the Japanese unique management style formally known as lifetime employment, seniority wages and enterprise union are often cited as significant factors in reviving Japanese economic recovery. Lifetime employment system worked to the equal advantage of both employers and employees.
Moreover, the context in which this book was written demonstrates that Japan is going through the financial affluence as well as the greatest boom since it is during the postwar period, much of the financial affluence had been caused by the consumerism in Japan. The author seem to be biased on this theme, despite the benefits consumerism has had on Japan, Yoshimoto goes ahead to give it a negative
...ty for one that better suited its capitalistic tendency. That opportunity came in1868 when the Meiji imperial rule was able to overthrow the Tokugawa regime, setting off a political, economic, social and cultural change that transformed Japan. As Japan embraced modernity with full force, some began to realize the negative impact of modernization on the rural life, social structure and most importantly on its culture, blaming it on the western influence on its modernization. Thus as Japan neared World War II, it embraced a new sense of modernization, one that was separate from westernization, creating a nationalistic and fascist government policy. Japanese society is characteristic of plurality and opposing value systems coexisting. As new ideals and institutions arise, Japan sees itself transforming and changing at the hands of internal and external forces.
While employees in both countries typically benefit from long-term employment, they differ in the basis for this. As German workers have certified skills recognized by all companies industry-wide, companies must have some incentive for workers to remain with them rather than departing to another. To accomplish this, collective bargaining between industrial unions and employers’ associations works to remove any wage incentives between companies, though this forces firms to accept outside intervention in their operations. In Japan, collusion among employers prevents employees from transitioning to another company without having to return to an entry-level position, a powerful deterrent given that pay and advancement within the company relies heavily on seniority. Therefore, long-term employment in Germany depends on the decision of workers to remain at their company while in Japan it depends on employers choosing to not fire their
The United States has one of the highest gender pay gaps among the developed countries. In the country, the gender pay gap is measured as the ratio of female to males yearly earning among workers in full-time, year round (FTYR) earnings. In 2009, female FTYR earned 77% (0.77) as much as the FTYR male workers (US Census Bureau, 2013). The history of Gender Gap earning reveals USA has made big strides towards reducing the gender pay gap from 1980. For instance, in 1980 the gender pay gap ratio was 0.62 while in 1990, the gap stood at 0.72. Further from 1990 to 2000, the gap reduced to 0.73 and then to 0.77 in 2009. Currently, the gender pay gap stands at 0.76 and continues to persist (US Census Bureau, 2013).
Due to various countries initiatives to shrink the wage inequality between men and women wages in the work force, the gap has narrowed, respectively, which may have helped form such opinion. However, stating that the gender pay gap does not exist in today’s society, anywhere, is completely unlikely. Seeing that the gap has loosened its grasp in the working world, in other countries, the gap between pay has widened or remained stagnant. One cannot help but wonder why the gap remains consistent, even with such substantial progress made in countries where the gap has decreased. Reasons as to why gender wage gap exist so heavily, slightly differs from country to country, but the overall effect from the wage disparity is wholly evident.
In conclusion, I tried to explain what experienced in Japan during the first years of rapid economic growth in terms of its social consequences. According to my argument, I tried to show imbalances which occurred with economic development in post- war Japan. In other words, economic development cannot appear as linear social development. Post- war Japan has witnessed positive and negative social consequences after implementing economic recovery. Therefore, we can say that society cannot always embrace economic development positively. Economic transformation brings its own waves and thus society fluctuates regarding its embracement. Japanese society received its share with this economic recovery during post- war period.
The way the Japanese treat their workers is so different. the way we treat our workers here. The Japanese are so much more respectful. towards their employer ( the exact opposite from other countries, especially those with a centralised economy and often work for one employer until retirement. Some of the special treatment that the workers receive is housing; some of the Companies, namely Honda, have a special housing unit for their workers and their families and a company cemetery for all the workers and their families.
Stockwin, J. A. Chapter 7: Who Runs Japan? In Governing Japan: Divided Politics in a Resurgent Economy (4th ed., pp. 46-72). London, The United Kingdom: Blackwell.
Today in the United States, men make more than women in various sectors, including education and other trades favoring women workers. The gap gets bigger when comparing the wages earned by men to those of women in jobs favoring men workers such as construction or other physically demanding jobs. Women are less likely to work those jobs, therefor; men have the advantage of having more experience and get paid better. In addition, employers would rather hire a man instead of a woman because they believe that a man will be able to sustain the difficulty of the job and work longer hours which crate a disadvantage for women because they are unable to gain experience and become skilled in that certain field. Gender pay gap based on this information is explained as the result of the discrimination of employers toward the feminine sex in terms of pay, which discourage them to work certain jobs leading to create a bigger gap due to the lack of
Hunter, Janet. “Gender, economics and industrialization: approaches to the economic history of Japanese women, 1868-1945.” In Japanese women, emerging from subservience, 1868-1945, edited by Tomida Hiroko and Daniels Gordon. Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2005, 119-144.
O'Bryan, Scott. 2009. Growth Idea : Purpose and Prosperity in Postwar Japan. University of Hawaii Press, 2009. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), EBSCOhost (accessed December 4, 2011).