ABE BROWN BAG LUNCH

Unbreakable Walls: Organizational Inertia, the Lack of High-Powered Women, and Sex Segregation in Japanese Companies

There has been some improvement in the last two decades regarding women’s employment in Japan, reflected in the number of highly educated women in the workforce and the government’s implementation of laws promoting equal employment. Decline in the number of women marrying has also led to the increase in educated women’s employment. Still, it is not clear to what extent the traditional male breadwinner corporate culture has effectively accommodated educated women workers. In this presentation, Nemoto discusses how persistent gendered customs in Japanese firms-related to hiring, pay, and promotions; gender stereotypes; and the custom of long work hours-reinforce vertical sex segregation, where a large majority of women continue to be concentrated on the lower rungs of the corporate ladder.

Speaker: Kumiko Nemoto
Associate Professor, Sociology Faculty, Western Kentucky University, 2010 Abe Fellow

Moderator: Takao Kato
Professor, Department of Economics, Colgate University,
2001 Abe Fellow

Dr. Nemoto specializes in gender, work, family, and organizations in Japan and the United States.　She received her PhD in Sociology from University of Texas-Austin in 2004. Her publications include: "When Culture Resists Progress: Masculine Organizational Culture and Its Impacts on the Vertical Segregation of Women in Japanese Companies" in Work, Employment & Society (2012), and “Never-Married Employed Men’s Gender Beliefs and Ambivalence Toward Matrimony in Japan” in Journal of Family Issues (forthcoming). Her Abe research project is “Comparative Study of Workplace Equality in a Japanese Multinational Firm in Japan, the United States, and China”.

When? Friday, July 5 From 12:30 to
14:00

Where? Seminar Room #3, 9th Floor, Japan
Foundation, 4-4-1 Yotsuya, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo

http://www.jpf.go.jp/j/about/outline/contact/map.html

Notes: To sign up, please email us at
ssrcABE@gol.com. Admission is free.
The presentation will be in Japanese. Please bring your lunch.

The Abe Fellowship Program is administered by the Social Science Research Council in cooperation with, and with the funds provided by the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership.