Expansion of global production in the automotive industry has made America’s local plants increasingly racially varied but also more financially pressured. However, research on global firms under ...financial pressure that focuses on the workplace dynamics of managers and production workers of different races and nationalities remains limited. This article examines the organizational processes of masculinity enactment of three groups of men—Japanese managers, American managers, and American production workers—in a financially pressured Japanese auto-parts company. It describes how Japanese managers rationalized account manipulation as a profit recovery scheme and American workers validated this approach as being self-sacrificing and representative of heroic leadership; white American managers asserted their authority over engineers, women, and Japanese men by using intimidation and emasculation; and a production worker displayed his compensated masculinity by forcing his team to engage in hiding defective products. This article discusses the implications of these acts and their legitimization of unethical behaviors with the goal of increasing corporate profits from the perspectives of masculinities and of management.
The number of women in positions of power and authority in Japanese companies has remained small despite the increase in the number of educated women and the passage of legislation on gender ...equality. InToo Few Women at the Top, Kumiko Nemoto draws on theoretical insights regarding Japan's coordinated capitalism and institutional stasis to challenge claims that the surge in women's education and employment will logically lead to the decline of gender inequality and eventually improve women's status in the Japanese workplace.
Nemoto's interviews with diverse groups of workers at three Japanese financial companies and two cosmetics companies in Tokyo reveal the persistence of vertical sex segregation as a cost-saving measure by Japanese companies. Women's advancement is impeded by customs including seniority pay and promotion, track-based hiring of women, long working hours, and the absence of women leaders. Nemoto contends that an improvement in gender equality in the corporate system will require that Japan fundamentally depart from its postwar methods of business management. Only when the static labor market is revitalized through adoption of new systems of cost savings, employee hiring, and rewards will Japanese women advance in their chosen professions. Comparison with the situation in the United States makes the author's analysis of the Japanese case relevant for understanding the dynamics of the glass ceiling in U.S. workplaces as well.
While the rise of non-regular women workers in Japanese firms drew much attention, little attention has been paid to employment barriers that regular women workers continue to face in Japanese firms ...today. Based on in-depth interviews with 64 men and women workers, this article examines gender inequality in Japanese firms in which women's structural power is extremely low. Using the analytical framework of organizational masculinity, it explores organizational processes by which vertical sex segregation is legitimized by workplace culture. The article concludes with suggestions for improving the prospects for women's employment in Japanese firms.
Abstract
In this article, we extend Walby’s analysis of gender transformations to theorize gender relations in conservative modernizations. We draw insights from a historical comparison of gender ...inequalities in Germany and Japan, to draw a distinction between conservative authoritarian and conservative democratic gender regimes, and their transformations. Conservative gender regimes, we argue, constitute the domestic as a public sphere and transform through social and family policies, which reinforce a gendered division of labor. The concept of conservative gender regimes, we argue, is relevant for analyzing transformations in other European and non-European world regions.
Racing Romance Nemoto, Kumiko
2009, 20090710, 2009-07-10
eBook
Despite being far from the norm, interracial relationships are more popular than ever. Racing Romance sheds special light on the bonds between whites and Asian Americans, an important topic that has ...not garnered well-deserved attention until now. Incorporating life-history narratives and interviews with those currently or previously involved with an interracial partner, Kumiko Nemoto addresses the contradictions and tensionsùa result of race, class, and genderùthat Asian Americans and whites experience.Similar to black/white relationships, stereotypes have long played crucial roles in Asian American/white encounters. Partners grapple with media representations of Asian women as submissive or hypersexual and Asian men are often portrayed as weak laborers or powerful martial artists. Racing Romance reveals how allegedly progressive interracial relationships remain firmly shaped by the logic of patriarchy and gender inherent to the ideal of marriage, family, and nation in America, even as this ideal is juxtaposed with discourses of multiculturalism and color blindness.
This study examines the experiences of diverse groups of migrants in a highly developed non-Western society: Japan. Using critical analysis of literature and semi-structural interview data with 50 ...Japanese nationals and 109 foreign migrants, it explores how Japan, which sees itself as a relatively racially homogeneous society, operates in response to increasing demands for migrants, and how the structures of the state and interactions of dominant and migrant groups affect migrants’ security. It shows the salience of glocal racial ideologies creating an uneven terrain of migration for migrants from different parts of the world. Specifically, the Japanese state grants work visas for highly-skilled and specialized labor migrants as it maintains that it only accepts highly-skilled labor migrants, while opening a side-door to recruit Japanese descendants and trainees from the Global South as low-skilled laborers. This bifurcated visa structure reinforces racial hierarchies, where those who are perceived to be from Western societies are deemed as superior foreigners, while those who are from non-Western societies are seen as strangers who are a potential threat to the country’s moral standards. This hierarchy shapes their level of human security.
Purpose
Building on the institutional theory perspective on corporate governance change and based on interviews with investor relations (IR) managers in large Japanese companies, this study aims to ...examine Japanese IR managers’ perceptions of the influence of foreign shareholders on Japan’s corporate governance reform and stakeholder-based system. The paper examines tensions, conflicts and collaborations among different stakeholders involved in corporate governance changes in Japan, especially in the areas of firm ownership, employment relations and boards of directors. The paper explains why convergence does not happen in some large Japanese companies by investigating Japanese managers’ responses to and perceptions of foreign shareholders in multiple corporate contexts.
Design/methodology/approach
The author conducted in-depth interviews with ten IR managers at large, listed Japanese companies in Kyoto and Tokyo and two managers at foreign investment banks in Tokyo, between 2018 and 2021.
Findings
This paper explores five themes that emerged from my interviews: Chief executive officers’ (CEOs’) mixed perceptions of foreign investors, the effectiveness of CEO compensation and outside directors, managers’ reluctance to accept stock price-driven business strategies, foreign investors’ engagement vs investments in index funds and gender patterns, including the effectiveness of token female outside directors. The Japanese companies the author looked at incorporated foreign shareholders as consultants and adopted a few major shareholder-based customs, such as CEOs communicating with investors, having outside directors, increasing CEO compensation and slimming down unprofitable parts of the business via restructuring and downsizing. Simultaneously, they resisted a few major shareholder-based practices. Foreign shareholders’ pressure revealed tensions and contradictions between the Japanese stakeholder system and shareholder primacy-based customs.
Originality/value
This paper is one of the few qualitative studies that explores Japanese IR managers’ responses to and perceptions of foreign shareholders in corporate governance reform, with a particular focus on ownership, employment relations and board members. This paper provides examples of tension, conflict and cooperation between Japanese managers and foreign investors, as seen through the eyes of Japanese IR managers. Examining changes in Japan’s stakeholder-based system of corporate governance reform enables us to better understand the processes by which, with vigorous pressure from government and foreign shareholders, a non-western country like Japan may adopt shareholder-based customs and how such a change may also lead to institutional changes.
Based on 25 interviews with educated and employed never-married men in Japan, this article examines how the diminished social norm to marry by a certain age, never-married men’s beliefs regarding ...gender in marriage, and the value these men place on individual autonomy all contribute to a trend in late marriage. We argue that the diminished social pressure to marry and the changing age norm do further men’s ambivalence toward marriage by allowing them to rationalize their detachment from the idea of their future marriage, their aversion to the perceived gender constraints of marriage, and the emphasis they place on their autonomy. However, we also argue that the weakening of the social pressure to marry does not relate to changes in employed men’s gendered views of marriage, which remain traditional.
Sociologists have argued that marriage today is based on individual desires, democratic contracts, and self-development. However, feminist scholars have criticized such a view of modern marriage, ...arguing that it obscures persistent inequality and social restrictions in marriage. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 26 highly educated Japanese women, this article argues that persistent gender inequalities shape women's decisions to postpone marriage in Japan. The article analyzes the emotional ambivalence and contradictions in women's decisions to postpone marriage. The women discussed here have intentionally or unintentionally distanced themselves from (1) marriage in general, which they view as inhibiting autonomy, (2) marriage with a sexist man, (3) marriage with a man who has rejected them, and (4) marriage with a man who has less income and/or education than they do. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright 2008 Sociologists for Women in Society.
Sociologists have argued that marriage today is based on individual desires, democratic contracts, and self-development. However, feminist scholars have criticized such a view of modern marriage, ...arguing that it obscures persistent inequality and social restrictions in marriage. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 26 highly educated Japanese women, this article argues that persistent gender inequalities shape women's decisions to postpone marriage in Japan. The article analyzes the emotional ambivalence and contradictions in women's decisions to postpone marriage. The women discussed here have intentionally or unintentionally distanced themselves from (1) marriage in general, which they view as inhibiting autonomy, (2) marriage with a sexist man, (3) marriage with a man who has rejected them, and (4) marriage with a man who has less income and/or education than they do.
PDF
