世論 What Japan Thinks

[part 1] [part 2]

goo Research, along with Yomiuri Weekly, carried out a massive poll amongst working women. For a week at the end of September this year, over 10,000 working women aged 20 and over completed an internet-based questionnaire on their thoughts and opinions. Twenty years ago, the Equal Employment Opportunity Law was passed, so this is an investigation into how the position of working women has changed.

This second half of the survey sees working for the government as very popular, but engineering-based companies like Toyota and Sony are in the top three, with NTT and IBM also showing up. Two perhaps softer, more feminine companies, Benesse and Shiseido also do well, and with livedoor in sixth, perhaps its well-known distinctly non-Old Boy president indicates to women that the company may be run in a more welcoming, and dare I say Western, fashion.

Note also that the majority of women have felt sexual discrimination at work, and in particular two in five women have experienced problems in the area of salary, promotion, and work and family life balance.
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Read more on: gender,goo research,women,work,yomiuri weekly

[part 1] [part 2]

goo Research, along with Yomiuri Weekly, carried out a massive poll amongst working women. For a week at the end of September this year, over 10,000 working women aged 20 and over completed an internet-based questionnaire on their thoughts and opinions. Twenty years ago, the Equal Employment Opportunity Law was passed, so this is an investigation into how the position of working women has changed.

It’s quite a depressing set of figures, I feel. Not just discrimination, but harassment seems endemic amongst firms, and women are so used to it that they perhaps don’t consider the everyday discrimination as abuse. On a more positive note, however, almost half the women want to have the opportunity to have a full career not terminated nor even just punctuated by baby-rearing, although I personally consider that a child during the first three years of life needs one full-time parent.

Note that here almost three in five report being touched up, which is very depressingly high, but sexist language is barely half that, which suggests to me that women on the whole are accepting of, or at least inured to, that sort of behaviour.

I also wonder how much under-reporting has happened – note that in Q1 people report that they were expected to do the woman’s work around the office, yet there seems no specific category for this type of harassment. Also, office parties are notorious for the boss getting drunk (or faking drunk) and pestering his female underlings, but perhaps this is seen as outside the work environment thus not job-related harassment?
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Read more on: gender,goo research,women,work,yomiuri weekly