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Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

> Japan’s top social problem is the role of women.

Says who ? Of course there are women who are aspiring for a career and this may be a problem for them, but then, most women in Japan are actually fine to leave work and go on with a life at home taking care of the children. I've seen several colleagues of mine who graduated from Tokyo University and had good jobs (with responsibilities similar to men's) and who left their career because they wanted to focus on kids instead, and had no regret doing so.

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I am surprised that you are getting downvoted.

How are Japanese women doing outside Japan where they have similar opportunities as men? Given choice, do Japanese women prefer to work outside or stay home? Some data on this question can provide some insight.

From personal experience, there is some truth to what you said. My wife is Japanese. We live in US. Once we didn't need two incomes, first thing she did is to quit her $150K job with a major software company. She is much more happier staying home and taking care of household chores. Just today, I asked her if she misses her job, colleagues, and working outside. Her response was resounding No. I haven't seen her more happier, content and stress free until she quit working. We don't even have kids.

Even though it is preference of one woman, it makes me wonder if cultural upbringing influences the decision to work or not, more than the availability of opportunity.

> Even though it is preference of one woman, it makes me wonder if cultural upbringing influences the decision to work or not, more than the availability of opportunity.

That is also my understanding. No matter how many daycare centers you put in the country, the key "issue" (and most Japanese don't consider it as an issue) is the cultural uprising. Japan may be a developed country, but culturally it has nothing to do with the US in many aspects.

About four years ago I was waiting for a plane in London and struck up a conversation with a former American Nissan exec who had spent a long time working at HQ in Japan.

He told me the story of countless meetings in which the senior female exec (there were very few) was expected to get up and leave the meeting for a period of time to retrieve and serve tea. He personally was disgusted and said that that was only a single example. IIRC he said in response to my question about why Japan had struggled to get out of their depression: "Employing only half their labor force might have something to do with it."

Supposedly Bill Gates said the same thing when he was in Saudi Arabia and asked how it could compete. Something along the lines of it's going to be difficult when you're only using half your population.

Ugh I really hope this anecdote is from the early nineties at the latest but I have serious doubts...

> there are women who are aspiring for a career and this may be a problem for them

Steven Pinker wrote about this in his book 'The Blank Slate'. The problem is that women here do not have the choice, as you yourself even point out. Perhaps the large majority voluntarily choose a lifestyle which does not grind against the standard but what about those which choose a career? Equality does not mean that women act the same as men, it means that women have the same choice as men.

Would those same women have made that decision if conditions were equal across the genders? Would they have tried to remain or return to the workforce if daycare supplort and career tracks were more suitable to their needs?

Hard to say without considering alternative realities.

It seems women are becoming less and less willing to marry[1].

"The second change is that, among certain groups, people are not merely marrying later. They are not getting married at all. In 2010 a third of Japanese women entering their 30s were single. Perhaps half or more of those will never marry. In 2010 37% of all women in Taiwan aged 30-34 were single, as were 21% of 35-39-year-olds. This, too, is more than in Britain and America, where only 13-15% of those in their late 30s are single. If women are unmarried entering their 40s, they will almost certainly neither marry nor have a child."

1.http://www.economist.com/node/21526329

You are right, a lot of women seem to be happy getting rid of not so great jobs and stay at home with their children.

But I think it is a social problem. This means a lot of jobs offered to women are shitty because employers know they will lose them around their 30ies.

Since there is social consensus to leave after a child birth, it makes it difficult keep the woman's job but with an alternative solutions, like part time, progressively returning after the leave or going remote.

I knew couples who would have wanted to switch positions, with the man at home and the woman working. It is not impossible, but there's a lot of hurdles and there is still a social stigma associated with.

Addition: A secundary effect of women leaving after building a family: the man in the couple has to bare all the burden. The employer knows it, and the power balance changes. This is also a reason why some couples don't want childs, or young men don't even think about marriage (they assess there is nothing good for them in the deal).

The position of women obviously shapes the whole society, and its becoming more and more a problem on a lot of very different aspects.

> But I think it is a social problem. This means a lot of jobs offered to women are shitty because employers know they will lose them around their 30ies.

That's why I was carefully selecting the example of the Todai graduates I knew who has good jobs and still ended up quitting to focus on family and children instead of their jobs. They were not forced to, and they were in companies which were supportive of women having children (making it possible for them to take a year or more of leave and come back in their positions).

Most women are perfectly happy with their role in society in Japan, and consider it "normal".

I think we are in agreement. You highlighted women who choose to quit their job and are happy with it, I brought up the complementing part with those who don't really see the other choices as an option, and some shitty situations generated by this unbalance.

The people who might be the most hit by all this could be the men, who are as pigeonholed in their roles as women, wether they see it as a bad thing or not (I think it's bad in the long term, but that's my bias)

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