ごあいさつ

 It may strike foreigners as a surprise when they are introduced to our statistics that even today, over 70% of Japanese women are found to be full-time homemakers when their first children are of age one. This percentage has stayed about the same for the past 30 years, despite the average increase in women’s educational attainment, changes in the attitude towards gender roles, and the law implementations such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Law of 1985, its amendment in 1997, 1999, and 2007, and the Act on the Welfare of Workers Who Take Care of Children or Other Family Members Including Child Care and Family Care Leave of 1991 and its amendment on 1995, 2001, 2004, 2007 and 2008. Many women re-enter labor market when their children grow older, but often to precarious jobs.

In 2008, We have launched a five-year research project focusing on enhancing Japanese women’s career attainment, increasing men’s family involvement, and promoting social policies, including supportive changes in labor practices in firms, in the supply of day care facilities, and in rules for governmental outlays to such facilities.

Our research is supported by a five-year competitive research fund from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. The aim of this research fund is to promote empirical analysis of impending social issues of the Japanese society in the near future. Our program, which targeted on the issues of work and family balance, was one of four projects that received the funding among 56 applications. We focus on the impending issues of the increase in precarious jobs among young males and females, difficulties for women to pursue their careers, lack of diversity in gender roles, and men’s long work hours and the reduced family time.

We think our interdisciplinary approach is critical to achieve our research objectives because we believe that work and life balance should be studied from diverse viewpoints. Our project team consists of scholars in Labor Economics, Family Sociology, Developmental Psychology, Gender Studies, Family Law, and Political Science.
We also believe that the input by various stakeholders is extremely important. We, thus, enlisted business leaders, workers and labor unions, as well as NPO’s, child care professionals, and national and local governmental policy makers as our research advisers.

Nobuko Nagase, Ph., D
WORKFAM Project Leader

 

  • お問い合わせ

    〒112-8610
    2-1-1 Otsuka Bunkyo-ku Tokyo
    Ochanomizu University WORK-FAM Office workfam@cc.ocha.ac.jp

<Contact>

〒112-8610
2-1-1 Otsuka Bunkyo-ku Tokyo Ochanomizu University

WORK-FAM Office
E-mail:workfam@cc.ocha.ac.jp