Hard times for women workers 1986 WITNESSED the introduction of so-called equal opportunity for women in Japan. The law that came into force on April 1 stipulates that employers can no longer recruit male workers only.
The equal employment bill was presented as part of the preparations for domestic laws to qualify Japan for ratification of the United Nations' (UN) Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (the Convention), which Japan signed in 1979.
The real significance of the bill, however, was more than the development of women's power and feminism; the legislation reflected the total transformation of labor policy being undertaken by the Japanese government and a concomitant new phase on the labor front. KAIT AMOTIKO
JAPAN claimed that if protection for female workers was denied, women would be forced to work just as hard as male workers. What they demanded was "equality as a result" rather than "equal opportunity": positive conditions should be created so that women could fully exercise their right to work.
Consequently, some women's groups began to stand up and say that they did not want an equal opportunity law at all. The movement reflected a basic, universal controversy over protection and equality in women's work.
Women in Japan learned that the debate has been taken up on a global scale during the UN's decade for Women and deepened and extended from mere equal opportunity for both women and men (formal equality) to resultant equality (substantial equality). (2) They also realized that in Japan particularly the debate was effectively a cooperative effort by government and capitalists with the intention to "divide and rule" women workers as efficiently as possible.
There has been a dramatic increase in the number of women workers in Japan over the past two decades. The total number of employed women as of 1984 was 15.18 million, or 35.6% of the total labor force, up from 7.38m, or 3.31% in 1960. This increase was more rapid after the oil crisis in 1973. The growth rate registered 3% from 1977-80 and 2.9% between 1980-84, while male employ. ed workers increased only about 1% during the same period.
It is expected that the increase in women workers will continue for some time and more women will be incorporated into the labor market. This means that the role of women workers will become more and more important in Japanese industry, the labor issue and in society as a whole.
Another signficant point is that the new women workers are largely middle-aged, married women. There has been a marked increase in housewives taking up mostly part-time work in the labor market since around 1976. Now one in three married women go out to work. They began to be mobilized during the high economic growth period as a reserve labor force, when capitalists tried to find a supplement for the young, unmarried female workers, the traditional major force of working women in Japan. But the number of older
See "Women denounce fake International Viewpoint' No. 70, February Equal Employment Opportunity Law" in 25, 1985.
2. On the United Nations Decade for Women, see Ros Young's article "Nairobi: Women debate their liberation", in 'IV' No. 82, September 16, 1985.
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KAJI ETSUKO
Interestingly enough, last year, 1985, when the Equal Opportunity for Men and Women in Employment Bill passed the National Diet [parliament], the total number of women employed as either full-time or part-time workers in Japan surpassed that of full-time housewives. More than 15 million women are working in Japan today, accounting for 36.5% of the total labor force. Women are no longer a "reserve labor force," whom employers "hire last and fire first." (1)
In a sense, the law was a necessary move for Japanese capitalism to deal with this newly emerged labor force. "Career woman" has become a favorite caption in women's journals and even women business executives are not so much of a rarity today. At the same time, the law is the outcome of government policy towards women over the last two decades.
The Labor Dispatch Law that came into force as of July 1, 1986, is another measure by the government to control women's participation in the labor market.
This series of recent legislation will inevitably affect the pillar of Japanese capitalism: the life-long employment and seniority systems, largely for male workers who are supposed to support their families. The legislation also reflects recent trends in administrative reform, industrial rationalization and reorgani-
International Viewpoint 9 March 1987 zation, including the privatization of state-owned industries, and an apparent weakening of the labor movement as a whole.
In the process of drawing up legislation on equal employment, "protection of motherhood" was one issue taken up. The provisions contained in the Labor Standards Law to protect female workers (restrictions on overtime and dangerous work, prohibition of late night work, guarantee of maternity leave, and the like) aroused strong controversy. Women were told they should choose "either protection or equality."
The Group for Making Our Own Equal Employment Law (TsukuruKai), organized in 1979, demanded legislation in line with the UN Convention. The Convention made clear that "Special measures aiming at protecting motherhood shall not be regarded as discrimination," and the protection of motherhood was to be reviewed in terms of the rights of both the sexes. Many women in the labor movement also organized themselves to protest against the view that the protective provisions are "overprotective" and contradict the concept of "equality".
In April 1983, when they learned of the government's draft outline for the bill, they realized that it would not have a beneficial effect on women, since the "protection of motherhood" would be largely • deleted. They
Fulltime women workers earn only 40% of their male counterparts women entering the market increased so rapidly that those working housewives became a major, rather than supplementary, work force. Women workers aged 15-24, who used to account for more than 50% up until 1960 and 41.5% in 1970, had decreased to 20.5% by 1984, while women over 35 years old now account for 60% of the total women's labor force.
Needless to say, older women had been playing a major role in agriculture before. But it is the first time in Japan that middle-aged, married women have come to constitute a majority of women employees. Thus both the quantity and quality of women workers has changed rapidly over the past few years.
The decrease in the ratio of young women employed reflects the trend of an increasing number of women going into higher education. Women's work in Japan is characterized by the "M" shaped curve. Many young, unmarried women go to work after high school, or higher education, temporarily quit to get married or rear children, then go out again to get a job. The second curve is gradually getting higher.
Where do they work? As of 1980, the industries where the larger part of employed women were working were: 1. service industry - 4.02m, 30.2% of women workers; 2. manufacturing - 3.97m., 28.5%; and 3. wholesale and retail sales - 3.6m, 25.9%. More than 80% of working 22 women are concentrated in these three industries, reflecting the "softening of the economy" and development of the "service-oriented economy" centering around the information industry.
The number of women workers in the tertiary sector, in particular, increased by 7% between 1970 and 1980, while those in the second sector (manufacturing) decreased by 6.8%. Nearly half of the employees in such service industries as finance, insurance, information, real estate, wholesaling and retailing are women. Women tend to concentrate not only in certain industries but also in certain categories of jobs. Low wages in those job categories have often been justified because this is "women's work."
As women play a larger role in these industries, discrimination against women in employment is not necessarily eliminated. Rather, the emergence of women workers is based on discrimination, much stronger in Japan than in other industrialized countries.
Women are discriminated against at all levels of employment ranging from recruitment to retirement. For example, almost half of the companies which recruit both men and women offer "different hiring conditions for each sex" including high-school, junior college and university graduates. And 63% of companies "excluded women from certain jobs."
The wage gap between women and men is actually widening. According to a report produced in January 1983, the wage gap in the manufacturing sector in Japan was the widest among 14 major industrialized countries in 1982. The average wage of women accounted for only 43.1% that of men. (In all industries except agriculture, South Korea showed the biggest wage gap between men and women.) Women get half men's pay
The government figures show that in all industries in 1960, women were paid 42.8% the wage of men. By 1976, that percentage increased to 56.1%, but then began to fall every year, from 55% in 1979 to only 51.8% in 1984. The average monthly income of an employed woman in 1984 was around 140,000 yen [at that time, about 5,800 US dollars] including bonus, according to Labor Ministry statistics. At the same time, prices are skyrocketing to off-set any wage increase. Almost 20% of family income pays for housing loans and education in an average working family. This is one reason why housewives go out to work - to get supplementary income.
Secondly, the types of employment for women have become increasingly diversified and now include part-time, temporary, daily and stay-at-home employees and housewives doing piecework at home. Almost half of the increase in women workers (41%) are either part-time or temporary/daily-paid workers. More than 70% of the total number of part-time workers, temporary, daily and stay-at-home workers are women.
It should be noted that the title "part-time" workers does not necessarily imply working shorter hours than regular workers. According to a government survey, more than 70% of "part-time" workers work 6 to 8 hours a day, doing essentially the same work as regular employees. "part-time" designates a status of workers who are paid less and who usually have no fringe benefits, bonus or job security.
Thirdly, more than half of women workers are concentrated in mediumand small-sized companies (with less than 100 employees), which in most cases are not organized. Large companies with more than 500 employees with a higher ratio of organized workers employ predominantly male workers. It is this kind of employment structure that contributes to the widening wage-gap between women and men. If we set the wage of male full-time workers at 100, a female full-time worker's wage is around 60, a female part-time worker's wage around 40, and women working at home about 20. Thus, it is obvious that women workers constitute the low-wage stratum in this society. Aside from this, women are also discriminated against in terms of social welfare, fringe benefits, allowances for housing and dependents and so on.
So the nature of women's work in Japan has entered a completely new phase in the 1980s. Up until the early *70s, the basic issue was that opportunites for women to work were quite limited and the majority of women workers were young, unmarried women. Forced retirement of female employees before 30 years old or when they got married, became pregnant or gave birth, was rampant. Hiring young women at minimal wages had been one of the major policies of Japanese enterprises.
As the high-economic growth period proceeded, the shortage of young workers became serious. The number of women who received higher education also increased. Japanese capitalists needed another labor force to exploit, and middle-aged housewives locally plus young, unskilled workers in developing countries proviInternational Viewpoint 9 March 1987
ded the fodder. Labor-intensive industries such as the textile, electronics, garment and other manufacturing, and food-processing industries began off-shore production to secure young women workers in other Asian countries.
The 1973 oil crisis marked a turning point. As Japanese capitalism felt it necessary to rationalize and reorganize industry to maintain the economic growth and retain economic power in the region, women were a vital tool. They had always been the "control valve" of the economy. But, unlike the end of World War II, women were not excluded from the labor market this time, though their number in the manufacturing sector decreased by 0.5% during 1970 and 1975, in the immediate aftermath of the oil shock. This had a strong impact on the women's liberation movement and on the global trend of feminism, to be highlighted in the UN International Women's Year in 1975.
Women themselves, demanding more participation in social life and economic activities strongly denounced sexual discrimination and the division of labor based on sex. Other social factors such as the spread of electric home appliances, higher education, mass culture and commercialism and automation facilitated women's participation in social life.
Japanese capitalism responded to the trend in a unique way, with policies encouraging the "efficient utilization of women's power" and the UN International Women's Year in 1975 was a golden opportunity to take advantage of.
Prior to the government's bill for women workers, the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce presented a "View on the Labor Standards Law" to the Ministry of Labor in 1970, in which they claimed that indirect protection of motherhood, i.e. protective regulations for women in the law, were "over-protective" measures which obstructed women's participation in social activities. They demanded that application of the Labor Standards Law for part-time workers should be regulated and recommended the introduction of flexible working hours. Basically they demanded revision of the law so that enterprises could hire and exploit as many married women as part-time workers as possible.
Since then, "protection" for minors and women workers has taken on a negative meaning, something women had to forfeit if they wanted to be treated equally with men.
Ariizumi Tohru, chair of the Subcommittee on Women of the Study Group on the Labor Standards Law, a consultative body for the
Labor Ministry set up in 1969, stated, "it is needless to say that women are weaker physically than men ... and inferior as workers in industrial fields where physical strength is required . ... Women workers in general, whether they are still young or adults over 18 years old are dependent as family members.... They are less organized than male workers, therefore it is necessary to regulate their work with protective laws." Cheap labour
At the same time, Arizumi stressed that protection is obstructive in employment. "From an employer's point of view women workers are welcomed only as cheap labor in the industrial areas where automation and mechanization have made each worker's job much simpler. In certain industries such as textiles and light electronics, workshops suitable for women are sufficiently developed to accept married women workers who are much less trained or skilled. Aside from their lack of skills, women have physical handicaps like menstruation, delivery and child care, as well as the legal handicaps prescribed in the Labor Standards Law. Basically, however, we should admit that women's labor is cheap enough to offset these obstacles."
Where can we find a women who is willing to agree that menstruation, pregnancy, giving birth, child care -in short reproduction of the next generation - are "physical handicaps'"? Why must women accept this assessment that such "obstacles" can only be offset by cheap wages for their labor?
In a report presented by the Labor Committee of the Economic Council in 1972, it was also stated that one urgent task was to locate women part-time workers as an integral part of the total labor force and to expand the area to make the best use of them. In the same year, the Working Women's Welfare Law was set up, in order to attract more housewives into the labor market as part-time workers by encouraging them to utilize their "free time" or "leisure time". The basic idea was that women should place top priority in the home, any job being secondary.
Later, this particular law was revised to form two different legisla. tions: the Childcare Leave Law in 1975 and the Equal Opportunity Law in 1985. The former is mainly for public school teachers, and nurses. Notably, the controversy over the Equal Opportunity Law derives from the basic notion of women's work and reproductive rights.
In 1977, the government publicized its action program for the UN Decade for Women, in which the abolition of protective regulation for women workers was brought up on the grounds that protective measures would reinforce discrimination against women in the workplace. This position regarded protection as a form of discrimination and considered it to be conceptually opposed to equality.
The group's report, 'The Task and Direction of Labor Laws for Women" was submitted to the Labor Minister in November 1978. It presented three issues: 1. legislation for equality, from the hiring stage to dismissal at all levels so that equality of both sexes could be realized; 2. that direct protection of maternity should be reinforced; and 3. most of the other protective rules for women could be eliminated to enable women to be treated equally with men.
With this, the groundwork for legislation was completed. Of the three themes adopted by the UN Decade for Women - 'Equality, Peace and Development" - "equality" .. offered a convenient means for the Japanese government and capitalists to initiate an "equal employment law". In July 1979, the government signed the Convention at the World Conference, which was adopted at the UN General Assembly in December 1979 and ratified by 39 counties by March, 1982.
With the road towards the equal employment law in Japan paved, business organizations and top execu tives of big enterprises, one after another, began to express their deep concern over the bill. They would either denounce protection as a form of reverse discrimination or stress repeatedly that "a woman's place is in the home."
The Kansai Businessmen's Council (Kansai Keieisha Kyogikai) submitted their views on the revision of the Labor Standards Law in March, 1982:
"Prohibition of sexual discrimination should include both discriminatory and favorable treatment of women, ie. protective regulations, aside from maternity protection .... Employers will inevitably have to deal with equality between men and women in terms of hiring, posting, training and education, wages, promotion and the like. Basically, it should be noted that equality means 'equal opportunity' and if we should agree with 'resultant equality' it would cause adverse effects and more difficulties...
And in July, the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce pronounced that "Legislation with regards to equal employ-
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International Viewpoint 9 March 1987
ment for men and women must be carried out deliberately lest it should lead to discouragement of corporate activities." The statement also stressed that "protective rules for women" should be carefully reviewed first, and that legislation should not aim for "resultant equality but equal opportunity."
When the outline of the bill was drafted by members of the Women's and Youth Problems Council, top executives of major business groups in the advisory panel to the Labor Minister, that assumed responsibility for drafting the bill, expressed blatant opposition to the actual bill itself. The powerful Keidanren threw all its weight against labor's attempt to create a "law with teeth," and to crush the growing women's movement demanding a genuine equal employment law.
Business leaders did not hesitate to admit that they were against equal employment opportunity from the outset. Every time a bill was drafted at any sub-committee of the Council, they strongly criticized it. Otsuki Bunnei the chairman of Nikkeiren (the Japan Federation of Employers' Associations) even stated at a press conference that Japan should not have ratified the Convention. "It is only a short while ago that women in Japan began to participate in society," he said. "There is no need to rush into such legislation; it is a more urgent task to reinforce family ties to prevent young people from getting violent... Before making a law, we have to evaluate how much Japanese housewives have contributed to the industrial development in Japan."
These views run in beautiful harmony with the policy to fully utilize women's power in the labor market. Women in Japan demonstrate for their right to work (DR) 24
The basic ideology is to present women as the "weaker sex" and "inferior" to males as workers.
In February, 1984, the Council submitted a final draft plan to the Labor Minister to be accepted by a Cabinet Conference. The Labor Minister, Yamaguchi Toshio, remarked: "Among the industrialized coun tries, Japan is the only country that still has menstruation leave. Today, physical strength is not as important for working as in the past. This is the era of women. Women can develop their capabilities and use their resources fully as much as they want in this society. If they demand protection to compensate for their physical handicaps as a basic right, women's capabilities will be adversely affected. .. Lest this should happen, I hope the bill will be passed in the Diet as early as possible... Equality legislation merely a guideline
The bill was passed, surrounded by quite a number of women protesters, and thus the Equal Employment Opportunity Law and the revision of the Labor Standards Law were established.
Now that the law has come into force, how much "equal opportunity" is to be offered to a woman looking for a good job? One of the strong criticisms lodged against the law from women is the fact that compared with similar laws in other countries, mostly enacted during the 70s, the Japanese law is less effective, since it does not include penalties or ban discrimination at all levels
1,::50 FAZI of employment. The law is merely a guideline, urging employers to "do their best" to offer equal opportunity for both sexes. In other words, the law itself is based upon the assumption that there are still fulltime housewives. Even if the chance for employment is opened equally to both women and men, if this means a 40-hour working week the majority of women are forced to drop out.
In addition, restrictions on night work and overtime work for women have been greatly relaxed. This kind of "equal opportunity," therefore, becomes a means for indirect discrimination. In this sense, the law might have emerged as a means to put the brakes on further changes in the rapidly crumbling system of the division of labor, and moderate and control the transformation of the labor force.
One phenomenon that has emerged in the first year of the equal opportunity law has been introduction of a so-called "ramified career system." The law prohibits employers from recruiting only male graduate students. Even so, some companies have no intention of hiring female graduates; many have changed their policy to offer two different career tracks for women: a general and an auxiliary track. If a woman is hired on the former, she is supposed to be treated equally with male workers, including job transfer, overtime work and so on. The names of the courses differ from company to company: inte grated and general tracks, professional and clerical tracks and so on. Hiring based on job division is not prohibited. Many banks, securities and finance companies, and manufacturers have already adopted this kind of
personnel administration. The wage gap between men and women is justified in these terms.
According to the Economic Planning Agency's recent report, "Labor Market in the year 2000," one out of three workers will be irregulars -part-time, dispatched, or temporary -by the year 2000. At present, one in six is an irregular worker.
It is easly to predict that women will account for the larger part of these irregular workers. At the same time, young women will be increasingly employed as dispatched workers. These outside workers are, of course, excluded from the existing trade-union movement. Even today, 99.4% of dispatched workers for clerical jobs are women, engaging in making photocopies, filing, typing, and such work as telephone operating, computer programming, systems engineering and the like.
The Women's Council of the General Council of Trade Unions of Japan, Osaka Chapter, opened a telephone counselling service in May this year in an attempt to find out the actual impact of the new legislation on the conditions of working women.
Over three days, for example, between May 29 and 31, the counselling service, dubbed "Hello, Equal Opportunity Law!" received 32 calls. Most of the complaints involved forced retirement, long working hours or discriminatory wages. In several cases, companies set their retirement age at 45 for women and 55 for men, apparently violating the Equal Opportunity Law.
In one company a woman who continues to work beyond 35 years old is forced to sign a contract saying that she will voluntarily retire within five years. One new female recruit hired by a city bank asked her boss if there was a possibility that she would be transferred, to which the boss replied, "Women have nothing to do with transferrence because they are going to quit in two or three years anyway."
Another woman with a 15-year career in a city bank was faced with the choice of doing an integrated course or a general course, right after the law was enforced. Although she chose to take the integrated course, the road to some form of career, the management turned her down saying, "Women cannot work as hard as men. And male employees would be discouraged if they had to compete with women." She was compelled to take the secondary course. "I could have been promoted if there were no such law at all," she remarked.
As for working hours, the law has meant that: 1. overtime is extend. ed to 3 hours for both women and men (before it was one hour for
International Viewpoint 9 March 1987 women); 2. at a food-processing company, working hours have been arbitrarily changed from 9-5 to 8-5.30 and the special leave clause in the company regulations has been deleted; 3. one accountant was forced to quit her job when she was asked to do two or three hours overtime everyday; 4. one bank employee complained that she worked after eight o'clock every day but overtime allowance was only paid for two days a month. Wage discrimination
Wage discrimination still exists in different forms. Some women said that even though they work from 9 to 5 as full-time workers, they are paid hourly, 750 yen 14.90 US dollars] per hour and are not treated as regular workers. For one assistant nurse working night shift at a national hospital, her employment contract is renewed every year, and payment is hourly without retirement allowance and bonus. She might not get a wage rise for years.
Trade unions are only open to regular workers. Some companies stop wage rises for female employees once they reach a certain age, 30 or 50 years old. Even among skilled workers, who do exactly the same as male workers, only the women are paid daily and have no paid leave. At a big supermarket chain, male workers always come first when it comes to bonuses or being promoted, on the grounds that "they have to support a family."
These reports indicate two things: 1. even the existing Labour Standards Law and other regulations on the labor-management relationship are frequently violated; at the same time trade unions are not responsive to the situation of women workers in insecure positions; 2. the enforcement of the "Equal Opportunity Law" is far from enhancing the conditions for women to work. It is even a backward step in that the law could reinforce discrimination against women with no job security.
Until women's right to work is established as a basic human right, either direct or indirect discrimination against women will remain, and job segregation will deepen as capitalism in the '80s pursues a more rationalized system of employment for both women and men. Labor management and the promotion of women are popular issues debated in economic journals. One the other hand, organized women workers remain at less than 20%.
Today, organizing part-time, dispatched and other temporary workers is the most urgent task facing the labor movement. And yet, the leadership in the existing trade unions does not regard women workers as co-workers, or recognize them as the key to the revival of the labor movement.
Recently, a group of Japanese women workers visited the Philippines in an exchange program with women workers there. They were greatly encouraged by KMK, a women's trade-union center. Although there is already a strong, militant and nationalist trade union, the KMU [May 1 Movement] in the Philippines, women felt they needed their own union which could deal with the labor issues from a woman's perspective.
It may be true in Japan, too, as present labor leaders are so slow to learn when it comes to women. There are many women here who have fully realized the importance of organizing women workers. Some work has already started, as we see in the recent struggles of part-time workers in different parts of the country. The number of part-time workers' unions is gradually increasing.
Regrettably, Japanese women failed to block the "Equal Opportunity Law." We are now faced with a deepening of the divisions between women and men, and among women themselves, in the name of "securing labor-management relations," Japanese-style. Moreover, we are faced with rapid micro-electronization, the introduction of office automation as well as insecure employment in various forms, and denials of the right to organize and establish solidarity as workers. Segregation by Japanese capitalism on an international level is also an integral part of this pattern.
The whole picture is clear enough. The majority of working women exploited, divided and discriminated against, either in Japan or in other countries where Japanese monopoly capital is being consolidated. Meanwhile, a small number of elite women are thrown into the most severe competition along with their fellow male workers.
The first year of equal opportunity must be transformed into a year for the launching of a new women workers' movement that can build up solidarity with women workers in other countries. If working women in Japan identify themselves with Third World peoples within and outside of Japan, they could make a leap forward - not towards equality, but liberation.
[This article was first published in the Japanese review, Ampo, Vol. 18, Nos 2-3, 1986]
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