CULTURE-JAPAN: Savvy Businesswomen Storm Services Sector

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Oct 31 2003 (IPS) - At 55, Noriko Suda is the proud owner of a chic clothes boutique that enjoys a downtown Tokyo address, and she loves every minute of her work.

”With the children grown up and my husband spending long hours in his office, I decided to start my own business three years ago,” said the fashionably dressed and vivacious woman. ”I don’t regret this step at all.”

From becoming owners of thriving companies to breaking into the male-dominated fortune-telling business, Japan’s women are shouldering their way into the business world to prove, as if with a vengeance, that they are a capable workforce on a par with their male counterparts.

Observers of Japan’s rather conservatively-minded business scene point out that what is even more noteworthy is the support extended to these women by the Japanese government, which has long been accused of dragging its feet on supporting gender equality.

”The last three years have seen mind-boggling breakthroughs for women who want to break away from customs that restricted them, which insisted that they concentrate on the family while men pursued their careers,” said Masako Hiramatsu of the Ichikawa Memorial Association, one of Japan’s oldest feminist groups.

Among the most telling indicators of the new mindset is a report from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which called on women to play an active role within enterprise. Not known for being anything other than conservatively staid in its views, the ministry’s report raised eyebrows throughout the country.

The title (which is true to form, however) is ‘Womens’ Activities and Enterprise Operating Results’ and is a gender study report. It listed amongst its recommendations that firms will indeed be able to increase productivity if adopting measures to encourage women within their activities.

The government has also decided to put its money where its mouth is and is now funding the setting up of new support schemes for potential women entrepreneurs.

There is at least one precedent for such an approach – in April 1999, special loans carrying annual interest rates of a low 1.5 percent were extended only to women by the public sector Life Finance Corporation.

According to Yamafuji Santo, the corporation spokesman, the service was started so as to recognise the business talents of women and help them launch new companies, a development that is also seen as contributing its mite to boosting the sluggish Japanese economy.

”Studies showed a lot of women want to start businesses but cited financial problems as their biggest hurdle,” he explained. ”We decided to launch this scheme to help them as part of a new drive by the government.”

Since launch, the number of women who have applied and received low-interest loans to finance their new businesses has soared. A survey carried out last year revealed that 3,277 cases – amounting to the equivalent in disbursements of 17 million U.S. dollars – were supported, up from 1,315 approved during the first year of the programme.

The same survey showed that the most common sector in which women began new business was in services, and that these included small restaurants, take-out food stores, nursing, massage centres, relaxation clinics, and pet grooming.

A similar programme, called the Centre for the Advancement of Working Women, was also launched in January 2001 by Japan’s Health, Welfare and Labour Ministry to aid women entrepreneurs.

Said Katsura Yamamoto, spokeswoman for the centre, ”Our surveys have shown that more women are keen to start their own businesses. They believe by doing this, they stand a better chance to advance their careers rather than be employed in large companies.”

Yamamoto finds that seminars for women that deal with how they can break into business are hugely popular. She said the centre receives applications from both single and married women, and that this response is a sign of the ”new determination on the part of women to succeed in what is vastly seen as a man’s world”.

Is this just another trend in the evolution of the notoriously inert Japanese economy, or is this a genuine landmark for the recognition of women and their place in Japanese society?

First, said Hiramatsu, Japanese businesswomen are venturing into service fields that are quickly and dramatically changing the image of what was once considered low-paying female labour, and thy are doing this by proving that such work can be profitable.

”With more women starting businesses in nursing, for example, women have succeeded in proving these jobs are important to society and command high salaries,” she said. ”This is a big change from the old days when women were supposed to look after elders as volunteers.”

More important, surveys indicate that the most important reason given by women about why they want to start new businesses is that they want to pursue lives that help develop themselves.

”Working in a company is stifling for women in Japan where men are paid higher and given more promotions,” said Noriko Suda candidly. ”By starting one’s own business, we can pursue our own interests, which is now important for women.”

Indeed, the numbers are on their side, for women now make up just over 50 percent of Japan’s workforce of 49 million people. But more than half this number is restricted to part-time jobs, and in Japan’s companies – bastions of patriarchal stodginess – managers who are women are only 9 percent of the total.

Still, Hiramatsu is buoyant. She sees Japanese society as benefiting from the number of new business that are service-oriented, refreshingly responsive to customers, and are – surprise, surprise – successfully run by women. (ENDS/IPS/AP/CR/IF/LB/SK/RG/03)

= 10311154 ORP006 NNNN