LABOUR-JAPAN: Full-time Homemaking on the Way Out

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Mar 7 2002 (IPS) - Before leaving home for her part-time job as a shop assistant, Asako Mita, 33, completes a few domestic chores. These include waking up at 5 a.m. to cook breakfast and make four lunches for her children and husband.

“I started working last year when my husband’s salary was cut 30 percent as a result of downsizing in his company,” explains Mita of the job she does thrice a week. “It’s a tough schedule but I am glad for the extra income.”

Mita works around 20 hours a week and makes around 10,000 U.S. dollars annually. And the shop that employs her is staffed by a part-time labour force of mostly women who are either her age or older.

Women like Mita are the new homemakers in Japan — a far cry from the country’s once glorified ‘sengyo shifu’, or full-time homemaker, that referred to married women who stayed at home and took the sole responsibility of nurturing the family.

“My mother spent her days looking after the family and didn’t even dream of working. Japanese women cannot afford the luxury of being a full-time homemaker anymore,” says Mita.

Analysts point out that those like Mita, who lives in Tokyo, highlight a new era for women in Japan.

According to Yoshiro Mizuguchi, a popular television commentator on Japan’s modern family, “The typical new type of housewife does not want a full-time career. She is actually quite a maverick because she is willing to work to support the family finances while taking care of the family.”

The emerging picture is not restricted to the urban homemaker, but is also taking hold in the more conservative rural areas, where spouses of farmers have begun to work in companies to contribute to the family income.

“A leading cause behind the new trend is the recession,” says Mizuguchi. “Growing unemployment has brought the message that families can no longer rely on one-income.”

Government statistics on employment reveal that women now comprise 26 million workers or 49.3 percent of Japan’s work force, slightly lower than Britain, which has a ratio of 55.2 percent, but higher than France and Germany.

While around half of the female labour force are part-time workers, the number of working women has also risen by three million over the past 16 years. Eighty percent of the female work force is employed in the corporate sector.

“I feel I need to help out my husband,” says 47-year-old Mari Yamanaka, who started working as a part-time employee in a supermarket two years ago.

Yamanaka ‘s husband lost his job three years ago and now works as a freelance technical advisor. To make ends meet — his earnings have dropped to half of his former full-time salary — Mari began her new job.

Natsuko Iino, an author on women’s issues, says Japan now has three types of families as a result of the breakdown of the typical family structure. They are the women who do not give up working after starting a family, women who work part-time to supplement their husband’s income, and full-time homemakers, who are rapidly declining in number.

The decline of the full-time homemaker, she points out, is representing a major turning point in Japanese society. The working husband and stay-at-home wife is no longer the ideal married life for women, she adds.

This is also encouraging more men to do home chores, a major departure from tradition.

Yamanaka, for instance, says her husband puts out the garbage and cooks breakfast on Sundays, allowing her to sleep in for a change. “I am quite comfortable with the changing situation. There is more equality at home,” she explains.

Indeed, comments from husbands on websites on working women reveal some startling changes in the traditional family roles.

“I am so lucky my wife works,” writes a 48 year-old husband, who did not reveal his name. “I don’t need to work overtime and I can always change jobs now if I get sick of my present work.”

Moreover, a story that appeared last year in the Japanese press about 56-year-old Kazuo Minegishi, wife of a farmer in Sendai, northern Japan, revealed another dimension of the change across Japan due to women seeking paid work outside the home.

Minegishi was quoted as saying she had developed a “family management agreement” for the household that allows wives, whose work has long been taken for free, to be paid and have days off. “I would never find a spouse for my son if we don’t incorporate this system that encourages equality between men and women,” she said.