Japan Sees Success With ‘Womenomics’
Japan’s economy has rocketed into the headlines this year as inflation returns for the first time in decades, workers win wage gains and the Bank of Japan raises interest rates for the first time in 17 years.
But there is another trend: Female employment has been steadily rising.
Since about 2013, the government has tried to make both public policies and corporate culture more friendly to women in the work force. The goal was to attract a new source of talent at a time when the world’s fourth-largest economy faces an aging and shrinking labor market.
“Where Japan did well over the recent decade is putting the care infrastructure in place for working parents,” Nobuko Kobayashi, a partner at EY-Parthenon in Japan, wrote in an email.
Still, even some who were around when the “womenomics” policies were designed have been surprised by just how many Japanese women are now choosing to work.
“We all underestimated it,” said Adam Posen, the president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, who advised the Japanese government on bringing in more female workers. Mr. Posen thought at the time that they might be able to get perhaps 800,000 women into the labor market. Three million have actually joined (albeit many of them are part time).
The lesson provided by the experience is simple: Women may be a bigger potential labor force than economists count on. “Clearly, women in Japan wanted to work,” Mr. Posen said.
The United States once had higher female labor force participation for working-age women than other advanced economies, but it has been surpassed by many, including Japan as of 2015.
About 77 percent of primeage women in the United States have a job or are looking for one. That number is about 83 percent for Japanese women, up from about 74 percent a decade ago and about 65 percent in the early 1990s.
Those changes came about because the Japanese government made policy moves, such as increasing child care center capacity.
The nation’s changing attitudes toward family also played a role in freeing up women for work. The average age of people marrying for the first time has been steadily rising, and fertility rates are at record lows.
“Delaying marriage,
Family-friendly policies draw more female workers.
delaying childbearing years, not getting married at all — that’s the big societal backdrop,” said Paul Sheard, an economist focused on Japan.
But there have been limits. The quality of jobs women hold is not great. They are often lower-paid and for limited hours, and women are largely absent from leadership ranks.
But Japan could learn from America’s more flexible work culture, said Wendy Cutler of the Asia Society Policy Institute. That allows women to avoid dropping out of the job market and disrupting their career paths when they do have children.
“Looking at the quality of these jobs is going to be more and more important,” Ms. Cutler said.