By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Jun 5 1995 (IPS)

Miho Tanaka, a 33-year-old graphics designer, was determined to hold on to her job at a Tokyo company when she married and started a family three years ago.

Juggling family and career, however, proved to be exhausting work. And her company began cutting down her job responsibilities because she found it difficult to keep up the average work schedule of 10 hours a day.

But Tanaka did not want to give up her promising career. She quit the company and decided to do freelance work which would give her more time to take care of her two children.

In a tiny room at the corner of her crammed apartment, Tanaka set up her own consulting firm, a one-woman show which she says gives her infinite satisfaction.

“I feel free of the stifling obligations of corporate society. But at the same time I feel bitter that women cannot make it in Japan’s corporate world,” she says.

Japanese groups attending the fourth United Nations World Conference on Women in Beijing in September say Tanaka’s case is a typical experience of women in contemporary Japanese society.

Mitsuko Yamaguchi, who heads the Liaison Group for the Implementation of Resolutions from the International Women’s Year which will represent Japanese women’s groups in Beijing, says it shows economic prosperity does not guarantee women’s equality.

“Japanese women have had to swallow a bitter pill. The hard work of our mothers who supported their husbands while they built up Japan from the ashes of war has not earned their daughters the right to develop fully,” laments Yamaguchi.

Japanese women’s rights activists believe it is important to present the real picture in Japan as the best example when discussing the betterment of women at the conference.

“Industrialised countries must debate more thoroughly the notion that economic development is the key to upgrading the social status of women… It is also important to reform social conditions that act as barriers to improving the social status of women,” stresses Yamaguchi.

Data compiled by trade unions show sexual discrimination remains a big problem for working women in Japan, who earn half of what men receive and have less opportunity for promotion.

Another major obstacle is women’s traditional role in society, which puts the burden of caring for a family on the shoulders of women.

“Women’s lives over the past 50 years just haven’t changed as quickly as we had anticipated,” Mariko Bando, director-general of the government’s Office for Gender Equality, said recently.

Labour activists working for the protection of women’s rights in the workplace believe a discussion on the situation in Japan would be particularly meaningful for Asian women employees facing similar conditions in their countries.

“Economic growth in their countries does not necessarily go hand in hand with the upgrading of local women in their society. There are situations where they may even face lower positions as a result of development,” says Mieko Takenobu, a senior writer for the Asahi Shimbun newspaper.

Women’s groups also worry about Asian female employees who have to face typical Japanese problems such as lower wages in the large number of Japanese companies that have been opening manufacturing plants and office branches in their countries.

At a forum on East Asian women’s rights held in Tokyo last year, a Chinese representative spoke about how married Chinese women have been forced to stay at home, a situation which she said has been modelled after Japan.

Shizude Kato, Japan’s first female Diet member and a pioneer in the birth control movement in Japan, says there have been considerable changes in the status of Japanese women since the pre- war period.

She recalled the time when women were forced to work naked in coal mines and had to carry the double burden of having unlimited number of children.

“Today Japanese women have far more choices than we did a few generations ago. But the achievements are still piecemeal and there’s a lot more work to be done before Japanese women are treated equally,” she said.

Women account for only eight percent of the managerial class in Japan, way below the 28 percent in Singapore and 13 percent in Hong Kong. Although there are now many women-owned companies in Japan, the share stands at a dismal five percent compared to 31 percent in the United States.

The economic recession has dealt a double blow to Japanese women’s struggle for equality. Despite the 1986 Equal Employment Opportunity Act, male applicants are still favoured over females in the stiffly competitive job market.

Last year, while 79 percent of male four-year college graduates found jobs, the employment success rate for women in the same group was only 61 percent.

Frustrated labour activists are even talking about taking their case to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women.

Last year they submitted a report on wage differences between men and women in Japan which also questioned the efficacy of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act.

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