Labor Research Team plans to conduct qualitative and quantitative research to examine labor practices inside the firms from women’s point of view. The Japanese labor market is under a pressure for structural changes. After the financial crisis of 1997 to 1998, Japanese youths and women have been increasingly excluded from long-term employment positions. As a result, they are likely to find themselves in temporary and termed employment.
Japanese large enterprises are also rapidly changing their employment portfolios. Long-term workers are stratified in different courses upon entry, including fast track and slow track courses, while at the same time dispatched workers and termed workers had increased. However, there is an increased recognition among the top management for the need to utilize highly capable women.
Many prior studies focused on the strengths of Japanese long-term employment practices such as the on-the-job training system which is said to give good training opportunities by systematic relocation, and seniority-based salary system that evaluates employee performance in long time span, which is said to help maintain high motivation among employees. However, little empirical attention has been paid on women who are frequently hired into different tracks and terms. Additionally, little is known about the allocation of work within firms for female university graduates in the fast track, who won the fierce competition for the entry to the position, nevertheless often are found to quit jobs in early career stage.
Our team, headed by Professor Nobuko Nagae who specializes in Labor Economics, focuses on the following research questions;
1. What are the features of the training and labor practices of Japanese firms that have been effective in enhancing male potential, but have negatively affected female labor attachment? Why does the same practice influence women and men differently?
2. How can the detrimental effects on women be minimized? What are the successful institutional systems at firms, and what are the successful factors and attitudes among female employees and their husbands as individuals?
3. When increase in less stable employment is taken as given, what is the policy that can increase general well-being of those who enter such employment?
We plan to answer the above questions by the following studies;
1. Micro data analysis of Labor Force Survey, the monthly large scale survey by the Japanese government, to tract and give empirical econometric analysis on the changes under way in the Japanese labor market, including job change, wages, inflow and outflow from standard and non-standard work, and in and out of labor force.
2. Focus group interviews for different components of workers, the fast and slow track females in long term employment, dispatched workers and termed workers of both sexes, and men in management positions and their evaluation of work and female colleagues.
3. Interviews at large-scaled firms, the human resource division and in different sections.
4. Interviews to individual workers, including females in fast-track positions, double income couples with children, and those in the increasing precarious employment.
5. Original quantitative survey data analyses.
We also like to compare the employment practices in different countries with those of Japan; why women can continue to work during child rearing, and whether or not such work practices increase the well-being of the nation. (Nobuko Nagase)

Family Research Team performs secondary data analysis about work/family balance, and collection and analyses of group and individual interview data as well as large survey data. This team is headed by Professor Masako Ishii-Kuntz who specializes in family sociology, sociology of gender, social psychology, and statistics. In order to identify the factors affecting the work/life balance of the Japanese men and women, this team will mainly examine fathers’ participation in child care and housework, and how they relate to mothers’ employment and career formation. In particular, the following questions are addressed by this team;

1. How do various child care support systems influence gender roles in families and family relations?
2. How does work/life balance influence marital relations and parenthood?
3. What is the "spill-over" phenomenon between families and work?
In 2008, the team analyzed the "National Family Research 2003” data collected by the Japan Society of Family Sociology to examine work and family conflicts. In addition, we examined the results from the cross-national comparative data to better understand family involvement of working fathers and mothers. We also received valuable research advice from the Hitachi Family Education Institute. Furthermore, we paid special attention to mothers’ and fathers’ familial roles when collecting in-depth group interview data in 2008.
Currently, we are in the process of preparing survey questionnaires for the large-scale data about work/life balance to be collected in 2010. We will also collect comparable data from mothers and fathers in the U.S. in order to identify unique factors associated with Japanese families in terms of work/life balance issues.
Our plans also include inviting top experts on work/life balance from the U.S. and European countries, and sponsoring an international symposium on this topic. Our final objective is to propose family-friendly policies which enable Japanese women and men to balance between work and family demands. (Masako Ishii-Kuntz)

Law and Policy Research Team, headed by Professor Tamie Kaino (Family Law) and Associate Professor Ki-young Shin (Political Science), analyzes the current Japanese government’s policies and laws on work/life balance from the perspective of gender and public policy studies. The current Japanese laws and policies on family and labor are based on strong male-breadwinner model which presumes the gendered division of care and paid labor in which wives take responsibility for care in family and male breadwinners earn a family wage in market. Over the last decade of neo-liberal globalization and dramatic demographic changes that are exemplied by low birthrates and the acceleration of aging, such assumptions have become less likely to hold in Japan. The changing social conditions demand a fundamental shift of traditional policy model to more gender sensitive policies and laws that would incorporate various needs of workers, male and female.
From that perspective, this research team, consisting of specialists on labor law, family policies and political science, examines the characteristics of Japanese work/life balance policies and how the policies could be developed to better incorporate recent challenges. Among the final goals of the research team is to make policy suggestions and propose new models for labor law. (Tamie Kaino and Ki-young Shin)

This team is headed by Professor Masumi Sugawara who is a specialist in Developmental Psychology, Developmental Psychopathology, Personality Psychology and Environmental Psychology. The research objective of this team is to clarify the relationship between work/life balance and well-being (family functioning, mental/physical health and development of family members) of families with children through the secondary analyses of the existing data sets. Based on the results of the analyses, we present recommendations for well-balanced working style which ensure family well-being.
Available data sets for the present analyses include:
(1) Large-scale Cross-sectional Survey:
Benesse Corporation “Basic Survey on Pregnancy, Birth and Child-rearing “
(From pregnancy to 2-year-old. Nation-wide cross-sectional survey conducted in 2006.)
(2) Longitudinal Survey:
• Benesse Corporation “Basic Survey on Pregnancy, Birth and Child-rearing”
(From pregnancy through 2-year-old. Nationwide longitudinal survey conducted in 2006 to 2009.)
• Kawasaki Longitudinal Project
(From pregnancy through 23-year-old. Longitudinal survey conducted in 1984 to 2008.)
• Good Child-care Environment for Children Project
(From 0-year-old through 1st grade. Longitudinal survey conducted in 2003 through 2009.)
Using above mentioned data sets, we are conducting secondary analyses with “parents’ working-style” as a keyword. The framework of our analyses is to examine the temporal interaction between the working style of adult family members (parents, adult siblings, grandparents, etc.) and:
• Family functioning
• Well-being of family members (physical/mental health, quality of life)
• Developmental features of children (cognitive development, social development, development of parent-child relationship, personality development) From the results of these analyses, we search for the “work/life balance” which leads to the desired outcomes in physical/mental health and various developmental dimensions. It is expected that there is diversity in family situations; therefore it is necessary to divide families into several clusters by family characteristics such as social backgrounds, family members’ relationships, etc. Through detailed analyses for each cluster, we are hoping to make suggestions which are sensitive to each cluster’s characteristics. (Masumi Sugawara)

Along with the conversion of social system from the 20th century to the 21st century, the desire and the sense of values about “working” and “forming a family” have changed. Besides, the working pattern and the employment system have been encouraged to change in the both realm of the private and the official business. In these situations described above, a role model study is one of the useful methods for providing the new findings which would become clues to elucidate the movement of our minds such as the incentive and the motivation. In this study, the new images of family and work will be created by investigating the various forms of the role models for men and women of the younger generations. Role Model Research Team headed by Professor Kaoru Tachi, a specialist in gender studies, shows various possibilities to achieve work/life balance, by analyzing specific forms of role model. In addition, in order to achieve these objectives, the research team also analyzes the role models associated with politics for promoting gender/disparity sensitive policy. These analyses open the way to identify the needs of work/life balance in Japanese society. Based on this perspective, our team’s research will accomplish the following objectives; first, we review the prior literature focusing on the formation and the development of the concept of a role model, including the documents on the role model in various types of occupations. Second, based on the variety of role models, women’s experiences, and both versatilities and differences in each occupation, the positions and the regionalities with respect to role models will be investigated. Third, we will analyze role models of fathers and unmarried men to find out the relationship between the varieties of recognition on work/life balance and the role models supported by women and men. Lastly, if possible, we will conduct a comparative study with the role models in other countries. Diversity of role models reflects on the different ways of living and working so vividly, thus it is necessary to study Japanese role models in relation to those in other countries. (Kaoru Tachi)