Can Women Save Japan (and Asia Too)?

• Author: Chad Steinberg
• Position: a Senior Economist in the IMF's Strategy, Policy, and Review Department and, until recently, was stationed in Tokyo at the IMF's Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific.

“IT is very difficult for women in Japan to balance raising children and working full-time,” says Naomi Nakamura, a 35-year-old physical therapist from Yokohama who is now on maternity leave looking after her four-month-old baby girl. “Many companies do not allow shorter working hours, and even if they do, female employees are often reluctant to work part-time because of the atmosphere at work,” explains Nakamura, who also has a three-year-old son.

For Nakamura, work, child rearing, and home are literally a balancing act. After her son was born, Nakamura was lucky to find a day care center near her job, but she still had a 20-minute bike ride to work with her son on the back. She tried to find an educational day care center for her son but, with none available, she had to put him in a center that provides only child care. She shopped for her groceries on her way home, putting the groceries in a basket at the front of her bike and her son in a seat on the back.

Like most Japanese fathers, Nakamura’s husband works late every night, so she feeds the children, bathes them, and puts them to bed herself. She then cooks dinner for herself and her husband. They eat late at night and go to bed exhausted.

She struggled to find a child care center for her son and felt uncomfortable leaving the office early if the center called because he was sick. Before she went on maternity leave, her husband usually took their son to the center in the morning and she picked him up in the evening. But when her husband was on a business trip, which happened quite often, both tasks fell to Nakamura. “I feel very sorry for my colleagues who have to do extra work when I have to leave the office,” she says.

Still, Nakamura feels lucky compared with her friends because her job skills are in demand. Many of her friends are being told they cannot have their old jobs back or are struggling to find part-time work because employers look askance at someone who may have to take leave to care for a sick child.

Nakamura’s story is common to many women across Japan and in parts of Asia. Their daily struggles balancing work and home are so daunting that many feel they have to choose between raising children and building a career.

As a result, in many Asian economies fewer women work outside the home than in comparator economies. The female labor participation rate in Japan is 24 percentage points lower than that of males, and in Korea it is nearly 22 percentage points lower (see Chart 1). In certain emerging market Asian economies, such as Malaysia and Indonesia, the gap is even higher. In China and Vietnam, in contrast, the differences are less pronounced, due in part to societal preferences.

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