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Women
  1. Introduction of Female Suffrage
  2. Tokuju (Special Order) Boom and Female Workers
  3. Increase of Female Employees
  4. Popularity of American Style Fashion and Western Dressmaking
  5. Part-time Female Workers
  6. Women and Agriculture
  7. Ama (Female Diver)
  8. Marriage Retirement and Retirement Ages for Men and Women
  9. Office Ladies (OL)
  10. Dual Tracks in Female Occupations: Ippan Shoku (Non-Career Track) and Sōgō Shoku (Career Track)
  11. Laws Regarding Working Women
  12. Sexual Harassment
  13. Low Birth Rate and Working Women
  14. Separate Surnames for Married Couples
  15. Female dominant occupations
  16. “Mighty” Women: Police and the Military Self Defense Force
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A group of prospective employees sitting in room while looking for jobs
With the decline of the special procurement boom, employment offices saw an increased demand for jobs by men and women. Photo from 1952.
Photo from Mainichi Shimbun.
Tokuju (Special Order) Boom and Female Workers
In response to the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, The U.S. military ordered a large number of products, such as textiles, from Japanese firms. The business from the U. S. brought Japan a period of economic growth called the Special Order (Tokuju) Boom. Since the textile industry and the metal industry were especially prosperous, people also referred this economic boom as "Itohen (thread-related) Boom" and "Kanehen (metal-related) Boom." The demand for labor rapidly increased, and many women worked as factory workers in the textile industry, repeating the pattern of the early decades of the twentieth century, when women in the textile industry contributed heavily to Japan’s industrialization. However, the textile industry declined as the Korean War ended, and there were mass layoffs of female workers in the industry.
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