GENDERED TRAJECTORIES

Women, Work, and Social Change in Japan and TaiwanBy Wei-hsin Yu

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2009 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-6009-6

Contents

Figures and Tables………………………………………………………………..ixAcknowledgments…………………………………………………………………..xiiiCHAPTER ONE Gender Inequality and Social Change in Japan and Taiwan……………………1CHAPTER TWO The Development of Women’s Labor Market Experiences……………………….21CHAPTER THREE Comparing Labor Market Structures and Workplace Dynamics…………………45CHAPTER FOUR Patterns of Labor Force Exits Among Women……………………………….70CHAPTER FIVE Challenges from the Home Front…………………………………………93CHAPTER SIX Returning to the Labor Force……………………………………………120CHAPTER SEVEN Higher Education and Gender Inequality…………………………………147CHAPTER EIGHT Conclusion………………………………………………………….178Appendix A: Description of the Data Sources………………………………………….201Appendix B: Supplementary Tables……………………………………………………205Notes……………………………………………………………………………219References……………………………………………………………………….233Index……………………………………………………………………………247

Chapter One

Gender Inequality and Social Change in Japan and Taiwan

The past century has witnessed dramatic changes in women’s work outside the home across a wide range of societies. Despite its initial negative effect on female labor force participation, industrialization has nearly universally increased women’s involvement in nonagricultural work over the long run (Goldin 1995; Pampel and Tanaka 1986). This overall impact of industrialization, however, has not led to an equivalent degree of improvement in women’s socioeconomic status in all countries. There remain significant differences in the gender wage gap, women’s employment rates and trajectories, as well as gender distributions across occupations and employment status among countries with similar levels of economic development (Charles and Grusky 2004; Rosenfeld and Birkelund 1995; Stier, Lewin-Epstein, and Braun 2001; Wright, Baxter, and Birkelund 1995). The discrepancy between economic development and gender inequality is well illustrated in the global ranking of gender gaps published by the World Economic Forum (Zahidi 2007). In 2006, less industrialized countries such as Tanzania, the Philippines, and Ghana outranked a few advanced economies (including Sweden, Norway, and Canada) in terms of women’s economic opportunities relative to men’s. The same report indicates that despite being one of the wealthiest countries in the world, Japan ranked 79 among the 115 countries included with respect to the overall gender gap-far behind many low- and middle-income countries.

Why does women’s economic status improve rapidly with industrialization in some countries but slowly in others? Answering this question requires a careful comparison of the evolution of women’s employment opportunities as broader economic shifts take place in different countries. Previous research on the long-term development of the opportunity structure for women’s gainful employment, however, has disproportionately focused on the U.S. context (e.g., Goldin 1990; Rosenfeld 1996; Thistle 2006). Knowledge of how macroeconomic changes shape the transformation of women’s employment opportunities is particularly scarce outside of Western Europe and the United States (Van der Lippe and Van Dijk 2002). Also rare are comparative-historical analyses of gender inequality in the labor market. The shortage of systematic comparisons of the development of women’s labor market opportunities makes it difficult to identify the social and institutional forces that account for changes in women’s economic roles and opportunities across the industrialized world.

This book addresses how social institutions affect women’s employment during economic development by comparing changes in women’s job opportunities in Japan and Taiwan during the second half of the twentieth century. Although these two East Asian countries differ in their levels of development, they share several important features that make such a comparison particularly relevant. Many of the similarities between Japan and Taiwan can be traced back to the historical, political, and cultural intermixing in the region. Japan’s fifty-year colonial rule in Taiwan (1895-1945) shaped Taiwan’s modern bureaucratic institutions and educational system, and contributed to a convergence in the two countries’ paths of economic development (Gold 1988; Hamilton and Biggart 1988; Mizoguchi and Yamamoto 1984). Among their shared features of economic development is a history of patriarchal policies, particularly the exploitation of female labor (Brinton 1993; Cheng and Hsiung 1994; Cumings 1987; Hsiung 1996). Culturally, aspects of the Confucian and Buddhist traditions have influenced both societies, leading to similar gender ideologies (Brinton 2001; Greenhalgh 1985). Also notable is that both educational systems are highly stratified and standardized (see Chapter 7), resulting in a strong emphasis on educational credentials in both labor markets (Brinton 1993; Huang 2001; Ishida 1993; Rohlen 1983; Yu and Su 2008).

What makes these two cases interesting is that, despite their many similarities, by the end of the twentieth century they differed substantially in their levels of gender inequality in the labor market. Although closely following Japan’s steps in economic development, Taiwan has seen more drastic changes in women’s employment opportunities than Japan during the past several decades. This different pace of change has led Taiwan to have a smaller gender gap in economic status than Japan. As the following section shows, the discrepancy in gender inequality between these two countries today is not easily attributable to their differences in macroeconomic conditions, demographic characteristics, social norms, or even policies and legislation. Using a comparative-historical approach, this book specifically addresses how Japanese and Taiwanese women came to their current places. The story I tell links macrolevel institutions to individual experiences and elucidates how individuals’ decisions and actions at key moments in their lives contribute to broader changes in women’s status in society. In telling such a story, this book aims not only to explain the puzzling difference in gender inequality between Japan and Taiwan, but also to provide a general understanding of gender and social change in industrial societies.

WHY COMPARE JAPAN AND TAIWAN?

Japan and Taiwan are both known for their phenomenal rates of economic growth during the second half of the twentieth century. Moreover, both countries achieved their postwar economic success through exports under single-party dominance (Johnson 1987). Nevertheless, Japan began its industrialization long before World War II and experienced the transition to a postindustrial economy beginning in the mid 1970s, whereas Taiwan’s trajectory of industrialization started later and was more condensed (Brinton 2001; Cumings 1987). Considering their different stages of economic development, one may question whether Japan and Taiwan are indeed comparable. This book, however, does not focus on the different levels of gender inequality between Japan and Taiwan at the present. Rather, the puzzle I intend to explain concerns the fact that Taiwan has veered away from Japan’s path in terms of gender inequality in the labor market, despite following Japan closely in the trajectory of industrialization. As later chapters in this book show, Taiwanese women did not start from a much different place, as far as their employment opportunities are concerned, from that of Japanese women. Yet, while still catching up with Japan economically, Taiwan has experienced greater changes in women’s economic roles and status than Japan. In this sense, the two countries’ different economic stages actually make the comparison of gender inequality in the workplace more interesting.

To illustrate the similar trajectories of economic development in Japan and Taiwan, Figure 1.1 shows the annual economic growth rates of the two countries throughout time. There is a clear convergence in the two countries’ experiences. Taiwan’s rapid industrial expansion from the mid 1960s to the mid 1980s roughly resembles Japan’s period of high economic growth from the mid 1950s to the early 1970s, whereas Taiwan’s slower economic growth since the late 1980s appears to have followed Japan’s experience from the mid 1970s to the 1980s. Taiwan’s “catching up” has resulted in a national income level approaching Japan’s today. As Table 1.1 shows, Taiwan’s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita at purchasing power parity in 2005 was estimated to be $27,721 (in international dollars), about 90 percent of Japan’s and higher than those of several other members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), including Spain, New Zealand, and South Korea. Other socioeconomic indicators presented in Table 1.1 also suggest that Taiwan has come to be comparable with Japan. The Gini indexes indicate that the two countries have similar levels of household income inequality. In addition, both countries have moderate rates of unemployment, a relatively high average age of first marriage and childbirth, very low fertility rates, and medium divorce rates compared with other industrialized countries (based on country statistics reported by the OECD [2006] and the United Nations [2007b]).

Despite their various similarities, Japan and Taiwan differ in women’s educational attainment and economic status, as shown in the bottom half of Table 1.1. The educational opportunities for Japanese women appear to exceed those for their Taiwanese counterparts. The percentage of Japanese women whose highest educational level completed was the upper secondary level was nearly 20 percent more than that of Taiwanese women as of 2005. There was also a slightly greater proportion of the female population with tertiary education in Japan than in Taiwan. The percentage of women with four years of university education, however, was nearly identical in the two countries.

Given Japanese women’s somewhat higher educational attainment, it is rather surprising that they occupy a smaller share of managerial and administrative positions than their Taiwanese counterparts. Furthermore, the differences between 1995 and 2005 indicate that the pace of growth of women in managerial positions has been faster in Taiwan. The same can be said for the average wages of women relative to those of men. Not only were Taiwan’s gender wage gaps smaller than Japan’s in both 1995 and 2005, but Taiwan’s wage gap shrank at a greater rate over time. By 2005, Taiwanese women received almost 80 percent of men’s pay on average, whereas Japanese women were paid less than two thirds of men’s wages.

Because the gender pay ratios shown in Table 1.1 are based on wages paid to regular full-time employees, the difference in such ratios between Japan and Taiwan represents only part of the difference in the gender wage gap. To be specific, although 36.1 percent of working Japanese women held part-time jobs in 2000, only 6.3 percent of Taiwanese working women did so. This difference is consistent with the fact that part-time workers are predominantly female in Japan (73.8% were women in 2000), but not in Taiwan (46.7%). Because part-time jobs generally pay lower wages even after taking women’s skills and working hours into account (Houseman and Osawa 1995; Yu 2002), the difference in women’s relative economic status between the two countries should be greater if part-time workers are included in estimating the gender pay gap. In other words, the fact that Japanese women are more likely to hold part-time jobs implies that their relative economic status lags behind Taiwanese women’s even more than suggested by the levels of gender wage parity presented in Table 1.1.

In addition to differences in the economic gender gaps, women’s employment trajectories in Japan and Taiwan also differ over their lifetimes. Figure 1.2 shows the female employment rate by age group in Japan and Taiwan, as well as in the respective major urban centers (the Tokyo metropolitan area and Taipei city). The employment rates are lower among Japanese women in their thirties and early forties compared with those ages 25 to 29 years and 45 to 49 years, suggesting that women have a tendency to withdraw from the labor force during the early years of child rearing. The levels of employment are noticeably higher among Taiwanese women in their thirties than their Japanese counterparts. Interestingly, this difference cannot be explained by the possibility that Taiwanese women time their childbearing differently than Japanese women. Figure 1.3 presents the age distributions of brides and mothers who had live births in a recent year. The distributions are amazingly similar for Japan and Taiwan, especially when we contrast them with the age distribution of mothers in the United States (data on the U.S. age distribution of brides are unavailable). The mothers who gave birth recently in Japan and Taiwan were concentrated between 25 and 34 years of age, whereas their U.S. counterparts’ age profile was clearly more diverse. Japanese and Taiwanese women appear to exhibit what Mary Brinton (1988, 1993) calls “condensed (rigid)” life cycle patterns, characterized by relatively little variation in the age at which individuals undergo major life course events, such as marriage and childbirth.

Given that the vast majority of women experience childbearing from their late twenties to early thirties in Japan and Taiwan, it is reasonable to argue that the difference in the employment rates among women in their thirties between these countries reflects women’s different tendencies to remain in their jobs upon marriage and childbirth. That is to say, Taiwanese women seem more likely to continue their employment careers than Japanese women during their childbearing and early child-rearing years. It is noteworthy that U.S.-based research on female employment has suggested a decline in women’s postmarital retreat from the labor force during economic development, particularly with a shift to a service economy (Goldin 1990; Oppenheimer 1970). Yet, despite its more advanced economic stage and larger service sector (see Chapter 3), Japan demonstrates a greater tendency for women’s postmarital retreat from the labor force than Taiwan.

The patterns of female employment by age group are generally similar in the major urban area and in the country as a whole for both Japan and Taiwan (Figure 1.2). The tendency of continuous employment, however, appears to be particularly strong among urban Taiwanese women, as the employment rate among women in their thirties is particularly high in Taipei. Conversely, women in the Tokyo metropolitan area have lower employment rates during their child-rearing years than the national average. Such opposite urban-rural gaps in female employment rates add further to the list of the two countries’ striking differences regarding women’s employment.

Figure 1.2 seemingly indicates that Taiwanese women’s labor force participation only continues until their mid forties, given the female employment rate declines among older women. An analysis in Chapter 6 that uses life history data nevertheless shows that this is not the case. Therefore, for now, I focus on Taiwanese women’s greater tendency than Japanese women to participate in the labor force after marriage. This Japan-Taiwan gap cannot be easily explained by differences in women’s family responsibilities. First, the two countries are similar in terms of the availability of domestic labor for hire. Unlike in countries with extremely high levels of urban-rural inequality (e.g., China) or relatively open immigration policies (e.g., Singapore), there has been limited reliance on cheap domestic labor supplied by women from rural areas or lower income countries in Japanese and Taiwanese households (Loveband 2006; Mori 1997). In the vast majority of these households, the wife shoulders nearly all responsibility for domestic chores (Gender Equality Bureau 2003; Lee, Yang, and Yi 2000; Tang and Parish 2000; Tsuya and Bumpass 1998). Second, as Figure 1.2 shows, married women in all age groups have fewer children in Japan than in Taiwan. Although having fewer children should enable Japanese women to participate in more labor force activities than Taiwanese women, the employment rate is higher among women in their thirties and early forties in Taiwan. Thus, despite the relatively low fertility rate, Japanese women appear to have difficulty continuing their careers upon marriage and childbirth.

Another possible explanation for the differences in women’s economic status and employment trajectories between Japan and Taiwan has to do with the prevalent gender roles and attitudes in the two societies. While the historical and cultural intermixing in East Asia is conducive to the development of shared norms and values in Japan and Taiwan, their cultures are certainly not identical. Therefore, it might be that Taiwanese women are less likely to believe in the “separate sphere” ideology, which prescribes men’s primary role to be market workers, with women acting as caretakers for their family members. Such a difference would explain why Taiwanese women participate more continuously and achieve higher status in the labor market than Japanese women.

(Continues…)

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