Using data from surveys conducted in a department store and a supermarket, Kimoto discusses the forces shaping job segregation by gender. One of the main themes is the need for Japanese women's labor studies to develop the theoretical and methodological momentum required for a fuller analysis of paid work using a gender perspective. Kimoto stresses the need for empirical studies to reveal the realities of workforce conditions and of job segregation by gender. This is linked to another major theme: the need to escape from the tendency of Japanese labor studies researchers and those working in Japanese personnel offices to think of women as necessarily disadvantaged participants in the labor market because of their household and child-rearing duties. Kimoto shows that this thinking serves only to prevent one from seeing how gender norms and therefore gender relations actually develop in workplaces. A clear picture emerges of the reasons for women's difficulties in moving beyond the lower levels of management.

About Editors and Authors

KIMIKO Kimoto is a Japanese sociologist and Professor Emeritus at Hitotsubashi University. She graduated from the Department of International Relations, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Tsuda College, in 1973 and completed her PhD at Hitotsubashi University in 1997. After working at Hiroshima University and Ritsumeikan University, among others, she went on to become Professor at Hitotsubashi University in 1993. She specializes in the sociology of family and labor.