Changing Employment Norms and Women in Japan’s Workplace

April 5 22, 2022: Changing Employment Norms and Women in Japan’s Workplace

Japanese firms are often said to be characterized by distinctive employment practices, including lifetime employment, age-based pay and promotions, long work hours, extensive afterhours drinking, and marginalization of women in the workplace. What is the on-the-ground reality of these practices in large Japanese firms today? How are the changing under pressure of global competition and a shrinking population? And what do these shifts and continuities in labor practices mean for women’s and men’s roles in the 21st century workplace?

Speakers:
• Hilary J. Holbrow, Assistant Professor of Japanese Politics and Society, Indiana University
•Ulrike Schaede, Professor and Director of the Japan Forum for Innovation and Technology, GPS UC San Diego
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This Japan Zoominar @ UC San Diego is organized by the Japan Forum for Innovation and Technology (JFIT) at the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy. For more information on JFIT activities, as well as recordings of previous Japan Zoominars, please visit jfit.ucsd.edu.

Bio:
Hilary J. Holbrow is Assistant Professor of Japanese Politics and Society at Indiana University. A sociologist by training, her scholarship examines social and economic inequality, work and organizations, immigration, and the intersections of gender, race, and ethnicity. She is an International Research Fellow at the Canon Institute for Global Studies in Tokyo, an Associate in Research at Harvard’s Reischauer Institute, and a member of the US-Japan Network for the Future.

Ulrike Schaede is Professor of Japanese Business at GPS, UC San Diego, and the Director of JFIT. Her research focuses on Japan’s changing corporate strategies, including business culture, change management, and business organization. Her 2020 book “The Business Reinvention of Japan” analyzes how Japanese companies are responding to the rise of China and the changing global competition.