March 8 is designated by the United Nations as International Women’s Day. In Japan, many initiatives and activities related to women’s rights have been conducted, and in particular, many policy measures to promote female labor participation have been implemented. It is said that female labor participation in Japan has been hampered by an unfavorable working environment for women, especially due to the long working hours and gender inequality. Abe (2011) demonstrated that the Act on Equal Opportunity and Treatment between Men and Women in Employment has not increased regular jobs for women. Kohara and Maity (2017) found that work-life balance measures also have made very small contributions to female labor participation. In short, many studies pointed out that the policy measures taken in Japan to improve the working environment for women have made only small contributions to female labor participation in the country.
On the other hand, the female labor participation rate in Japan has been rising steadily in recent years. In addition to efforts to improve working environments in general, there has been a series of policies that have promoted the empowerment of women, women’s economic independence and men’s active involvement in the household and community affairs, as outlined in the Basic Policies Related to Women 2024, which places a high value on women’s participation in the labor market, , potentially contributing to the rise in female labor participation rate. Therefore, this article introduces research that examines whether or not the failure of the working environment improvement measures to contribute significantly to female labor participation, which has been pointed out by previous studies, is attributable to Japan’s cultural values.
Overview of the research approach
It is difficult to identify the presence or absence of an economic impact of the society’s values through conventional research approaches. This difficulty stems from the fact that in an analysis focusing on a particular country, it is difficult to distinguish cultural factors from social and economic factors because identical or similar cultural backgrounds are shared by all subjects. Meanwhile, in an analysis covering multiple countries, although cultural backgrounds may differ among individuals from different countries, it is difficult to identify the impact of the cultural background due to the presence of many unobservable factors, including the different social and natural environments in different countries (Fernandez 2011).
An approach that can resolve those problems has been developed overseas. It is known as the epidemiological approach in economics, which uses data contrasting native and immigrant populations in a certain country. This approach has its origin in epidemiologists’ use of sample groups of natives and immigrants in order to divide disease-causing factors into genetic and environmental factors. Borrowing the approach from epidemiologists, economists use sample groups of individuals whose cultural background is different from that of the wider society despite sharing the economic and social circumstances, and as a result, it has become possible to distinguish the impact of the cultural background, including societal values, from the impact of social and economic factors (Fernandez 2011). For example, Algan and Cahuc (2010), using Americans born to parents of foreign origin as a sample group, identified the impact of social attitudes on economic development. Using a similar approach, studies have been conducted to determine the impact of the cultural background on female labor supply in the United States (e.g., Blau et.al. 2013; Fernandez and Fogli 2009).
Results based on Japanese data
Shown below are the results of the first study using this approach to examine the factors that may affect female labor participation in Japan (Note 1). The main data used in the study are individual data concerning Japanese and foreign nationals obtained through the Population Census, compiled by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications’ Statistics Bureau. First, the study undertook an estimation while controlling the impacts of academic achievement, age, the economic situation of the household, the spouse’s academic achievement and employment status, the prefecture of residence, and the population size of the prefecture of residence, and the presence or absence and number of cohabitating children and elderly persons. As a result, it was found that foreign women who have resided in Japan for an extended period of time have a significantly higher probability of participating in labor than Japanese women despite sharing the same economic and social environments as Japanese nationals. As a result of an analysis incorporating data on relevant social values obtained through the World Values Survey (a project involving research institutions from around 100 countries and regions) into the estimation model, it was found that an increase of one standard deviation point in the value of the social value indicator leads to a decline of 4.9 percentage points in the probability of female labor participation. The extent of the impact is large enough to be almost equal to the impact of the academic achievement level among the samples with a university degree. As a result of the estimation of factor-by-factor contribution, it was also found that 93.6% of the difference between the female labor participation rates among foreign and Japanese women can be explained by the variables incorporated in this estimation model. Social values made the greatest contribution, accounting for 25.8% of the difference, surpassing the contributions of the sample woman’s academic achievement level (21.1%) and the spouse’s academic achievement level (23.6%).
The variable used in the study to analyze social values concerning female labor participation is an indicator of values that people in a certain country have in relation to women being full-time housewives compared with women participating in the labor force. The higher the numerical value of the indicator, the lower the value that is attributed to women’s participating in the labor market over that of being a full-time housewife. The value of the indicator in Japan was 3.12, which is higher than 2.75, which is the average value for the 55 countries surveyed. This finding is presumably attributable to the high value that is attributed to full-time housewives in Japanese society compared to other countries. Unless working women are also seen in high regard, women in Japan may remain reluctant to participate in the labor market.
Conclusion
The failure of past measures taken to improve the working environment for women in terms of their contribution to the rise in the female labor participation rate is attributable in greater part to social values related to female labor participation than to the working environment itself. Looking at neighboring countries for reference, we see different trends in China and Taiwan. In China as well, women face workplace prejudice and support measures such as childcare leave or benefits for parents with children are hardly available, and the quality of nursery facilities in China is inferior compared with Japanese facilities. However, according to an international survey on students’ attitude toward working (Note 2), among Chinese female university students, the percentage of those who wished to continue working after marriage and childbearing was 76% (similarly it is 82% among Taiwanese female university students). In contrast, the percentage was as low as 30% among Japanese female university students. This attitude is a factor that cannot be ignored when we think about female labor participation in Japan.
In recent years, there has been an increase in the social value attributed to female labor participation thanks to the policy measures implemented under the banner of “empowerment of women” and the Basic Policies Related to Women, which has resulted in increasing the female labor participation rate. However, it is difficult to fundamentally change social values. Therefore, when evaluating the effects of policy measures, it is not necessarily a prerequisite to assume that the level of female labor participation in Japan must be raised to the international standard.
March 8, 2024
>> Original text in Japanese
