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Two men in suits walking in a crosswalk.
Employment
  1. Group Employment Trips
  2. Spring Employment Season
  3. Hiring New Graduates
  4. Hiring New High School Graduates
  5. The Japanese Employment System
  6. Lifetime Employment
  7. The Seniority Wage System (nenkō joretsu)
  8. The Bonus System
  9. Enterprise Unions in Japan
  10. Enterprise Union Cooperation
  11. Unemployment Insurance
  12. Dual Tracks in Female Occupations: Ippan Shoku (Non-Career Track) and Sōgō Shoku (Career Track)
  13. Increase of Female Employees
  14. Female dominant occupations
  15. Post-Retirement Employment and Social Security
  16. Marriage Retirement and Retirement Ages for Men and Women
  17. Relations between Large and Small Companies
  18. Part-time Female Workers
  19. What Kinds of Work Do People Do in Japan?
  20. Freeter/ Furita: Part-Time Workers in Japan
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Flight attendents in front of prop plane
The first airline stewardesses in Japan, 1951.
Photo from Mainichi Shimbun.
Female dominant occupations
Teaching is one of the most popular occupations among Japanese women. The number of female teachers is particularly high in preschool education, with over 90% of kindergarten teachers being female. The higher the level of schooling, the smaller the number of females among teachers. While over 60% of grade school teachers are females, the proportion of female faculty members at colleges and universities is only 20%. This includes many women who teach at women’s colleges and junior colleges. Women are active in occupations related to social welfare. They look after children at nursery schools. They are also caregivers and home helpers who work with the handicapped and the elderly. Women also play important roles in the medical arena. While they constitute only 10-20% of doctors and technicians, nurses, including public health nurses, are overwhelmingly women. Furthermore, over 60% of pharmacists are females. Many women also work in service industries. Being a flight attendant is one of the star occupations for young Japanese females. Click CHARTS to see the top five occupations that Japanese children chose as “what I want to be in the future.” Click PICTURES to see the photo of a nurses’ strike in the 1960s.
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