By women, for women: Japanese women's attitudes towards employment in the Occupation era
Titel:
By women, for women: Japanese women's attitudes towards employment in the Occupation era
Auteur:
Aoki, Darren
Verschenen in:
Japan forum
Paginering:
Jaargang 12 (2000) nr. 1 pagina's 87-112
Jaar:
2000-04-01
Inhoud:
This article deals with Japanese women and employment in the years during and immediately following the Allied Occupation (1945 to 1952). Through the use of public opinion polls conducted by the Prime Minister's Office, women's attitudes towards employment will be diagrammed within the context of larger emergent employment patterns. It will argue that although external influences and institutions circumscribed female employment activities, women themselves structured their participation in the labour force to reflect a set of priorities, concerns and ideals grounded in a traditionalistic conception of domesticity and motherhood. First, it addresses external factors that at once moulded women's motivations to seek employment while obstructing the emergence of female career-consciousness. Second, it looks at 'internal' reasons (women's self-perceptions and ideals) influencing the lesser normative priority assigned by women to the notion of female employment. In balancing statistical data with anecdotal evidence, and by contextualising the contemporary picture with references to both pre-war influences and post-Occupation developments, this article will interpret the Occupation not in terms of its elite actors, but through the attitudes of everyday women whose influence in the reconstruction of Japan was dynamic and profound.
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