‘Pregnancy rotas’ add to working women woes

Issue highlights challenge of Japan’s shrinking population, gender roles

TOKYO — Sayako had been trying to conceive a second child for two years when her boss at a Japanese day care center suggested she stop because she had missed her “turn”.

Sayako, who spoke using a pseudonym, learned her boss had an unwritten policy that experts say is not uncommon in Japan: an informal “pregnancy rota” for employees.

“Why don’t you take a break, you already have one,” her boss said, despite knowing Sayako was so keen to get pregnant that she was seeing a fertility specialist.

“I was so shocked and stunned that I couldn’t answer,” the 35-year-old said.

Sayako’s boss told her that an older newlywed at her workplace now had priority when it came to having children.

She quit the job and moved to another day care center, recently giving birth to her second child.

If she had stayed, “I think I’d have said ‘I’m sorry’” instead of celebrating the birth of the baby.

The issue of “pregnancy rotas” hit the headlines earlier this year when a man wrote about his wife’s experience getting pregnant “out of turn”.

In a letter to the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper, he said he and his wife had apologized to her boss at a nursery.

The letter sparked a debate about the practice, which experts say is particularly prevalent in sectors that struggle to find and retain employees, like the day care industry.

It represents an intersection of two of Japan’s most pressing social issues: a shrinking population and the struggle women face balancing a career and family.

A declining birthrate has created labor shortages, but workplaces often demand long hours and overtime — a difficult prospect for female employees in a society that often still expects women to take the lead on housework and child care.

This leaves many women feeling forced to quit their jobs to have children or forego a family to stay employed and get promoted.

“Pregnancy rotas” have become “a normal practice at workplaces that mostly employ young female workers,” said Kanako Amano, a researcher at the NLI Research Institute.

Some women “don’t realize it is unfair, and instead feel apologetic” for taking maternity leave.

Employers argue that the labor shortage makes it impossible to manage a business if employees take maternity leave whenever it suits their family.

But the result is a situation that only exacerbates Japan’s shrinking population, Amano said.

Legal experts say that forcing employees to conceive on a rota is against the law, but it has become almost “inevitable” at workplaces like nurseries and hospitals, said Naoki Sakasai, a senior official at the Tokyo-based Research Institute of Early Childhood Care and Education.

“It is on workers’ minds, whether it is written or not.”

The issue is only one of many challenges for women in the workplace in Japan, which ranks bottom of the G7 countries on female representation in politics and business.

Amano said a broader cultural shift was needed to boost female participation in the workplace.

“There is a phrase ‘messhi boukou’ in Japanese that means ... killing your private life to serve,” she said.

“The workstyle or culture that presents ‘messhi boukou’ as a touching story is the root of all these evils.”