Abe's Womenomics Policy, 2013-2020
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Volume 19 | Issue 4 | Number 4 | Article ID 5540 | Feb 15, 2021 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Abe’s Womenomics Policy, 2013-2020: Tokenism, Gradualism, or Failed Strategy? Mark Crawford quickly, we argued [in 1999] that the nation not only faced the risk of a further Abstract: Former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo decline in its productivity and potential left office with Japan’s “Womenomics” policy growth rate, but eventually, lower having fallen far short of its 2020 targets, and standards of living as well.” --Kathy with its greatest achievement, the increase in Matsui, Vice-Chair and Chief Strategist of female non-regular employment, largely Goldman Sachs Japan. (Emphasis added.) reversed by the COVID-19 recession. Although significant initiatives have been undertaken in the provision of childcare, tax reform, and parental leave policy, elite opinions within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, the government bureaucracy and the corporate sector militate against the mandatory regulations and political and social reforms that are still needed. These reforms are required because of the severity of Japan’s demographic and economic challenges, the limited political feasibility of mass immigration, and the deep Image Source: Savvy Tokyo structural inertia built into Japan’s employment system. Keywords: Abe, Abenomics, childcare, gender Abe’s Womenomics Policy in Historical equality, parental leave, Womenomics Context In 1999 a group of investment strategists at Goldman Sachs Japan led by Kathy Matsui applied the term ‘Womenomics’ to describe “Creating an environment in which women their recommended strategy for revitalizing the find it comfortable to work… is no longer a stagnant Japanese economy by “closing the matter of choice for Japan. It is instead a gender employment gap” and promoting the matter of the greatest urgency.” -- PM Abe better utilization of human capital through 1 Shinzō, speaking to the United Nations in workplace equality. Two decades later, and six September 2013. (Emphasis added.) years after seeing Womenomics adopted as official government policy, Matsui claimed that “Since Japan’s population is shrinking, “one of the biggest game changers in Japan’s capital is finite, and productivity gains will attitude towards gender issues was the shift take time, unless radical steps are taken from diversity being a social or human rights 1 19 | 4 | 4 APJ | JF issue to being an economic and business in the realms of education, the financial system, imperative.”2 This article critically examines bureaucracy and employment practices. In the whether the elevation of gender withineconomic arena, this meant that the export of economic discourse has been matched by manufactured products, capital and people was results in the economy and in society. It finds stressed, while their import was not. This that notwithstanding several importantstrategy was facilitated and reinforced by a innovations in the past three years relating to high domestic savings rate and high export labour standards, pay equity, tax policy, and earnings. An employment structure was also the funding of both paternity leave anddeveloped based on lifetime employment and daycare, Japan seems fated to fall drastically seniority wages for elite workers in large short of nearly all its stated goals for gender corporations, enterprise unions which agreed equity in the 2020s. to non-confrontational labour relations and long hours in exchange for job security, and “Abenomics”, a brochure and website by the paternalistic company welfare functions in elite Government of Japan updated in June 2020, corporations. These institutions of high-speed touted the Abe government’s achievements growth worked well enough to make possible since taking office in 2012 in promoting the Japan’s rise to being the world’s second largest status of women in the Japanese economy.3 It economy, consistent with an advanced welfare pointed out that, between 2012 and 2019, the state and lower levels of income inequality than number of women in private sectoralmost every other developed country.6 management positions “approached 10%”, while 3.3 million joined the workforce. An Underpinning this entire system, however, was impressive graph showed Japan’s labour force a sexual division of labour in which women participation rate for females vaulting past that accepted virtually sole responsibility for of the United States during this period, to household management, the raising of children, 74.0% compared with just 70.9% for the US. and the care of aging parents. Women’s Unfortunately, these statistics were misleading management of household finances gave them insofar as they failed to mention the precarity an important role in helping to generate the of the female workforce. In 2017, 50% of the 28 savings that financed the economic miracle, but million women in the Japanese labour market no say in shaping economic institutions or the were in ‘non-regular’ jobs with few benefits, salaryman culture that pervaded Japanese lower pay and shorter hours than ‘regular’ (i.e. society despite only directly benefitting a small ‘permanent’) employees, in comparison to just number of elite male middle-class workers.7 As 16.7% of the 35 million male workers.4 By millions of women gained ground in affluence, 2019, these ratios had risen to 56.0% of education, and juridical status, many began to females and 22.8% of males respectively.5 see the role of housewife and mother as a trap. Unsurprisingly, women disproportionately bore R. Taggart Murphy describes this perceived the brunt of unemployment in the COVID-19 trap as being more pronounced, and more recession. Of the record 970,000 people who problematic, in Japan than in other industrial had just been laid off in April 2020, 710,000 and industrializing countries, where men are were women, making them the “shockboth more able and more willing to share in absorbers” of the Japanese economy. housework and child-rearing. “For while Japanese blue-collar workers, salarymen, The current situation of Japan’s female workers farmers, small business owners, shadowy Far is deeply rooted in 75 years of history. Postwar Right fixers, ambitious politicians and the Japan pioneered novel institutions thatUniversity of Tokyo-bred mandarin class…had combined both foreign and domestic elements all had their input during the 1950s when the 2 19 | 4 | 4 APJ | JF institutions of high-speed growth assumed their restructure the gender order has produced the final shape, women were not represented. The worst of both worlds: the rejection of the shufu consequences of their exclusion—both for them model that once encouraged larger families, and for the men they married and the children without the kinds of economic opportunities, they raised—would culturalprove changes and institutional supports that 8 incalculable.” Feminist critiques have shown could enable Japanese women to effectively that the first generation of laws dealing with combine child-rearing with careers (or employment equity, childcare, eldercare, and contribute to raising productivity). sexual violence were inadequate to address the deep structural and cultural impediments In 2020, Japanese men still did less housework facing women struggling to balance family than their counterparts in any other developed responsibilities with careers.9 10 As Helen country, while women got less sleep than any of Macnaughtan observed in 2015, “[t]hetheir counterparts, according to the OECD.13 lingering ideal of the male salaryman and the The postwar employment model and several female shufu (housewife) is now hugely aspects of its associated social compact are still disconnected from social realities, but remains firmly in place, despite this growing as an ideal because the alternative – the dysfunction, which explains how a G-7 country renegotiation of men, women, work and that ranked 19th among all nations in the 2020 11 childcare – is complex.” United Nations Human Development Index has also slid to 121st out of 153 countries in the Moreover, the growing disillusionment of World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Japanese women with the shufu role model has Report] , a drop of 40 places since 2006. The occurred within an economic context of equality ranking is a composite of four sub- increased precarity of employment since the indices: a respectable 40th in health; a more Great Recession of the 1990s. The increase in worrying 91st in educational attainment; and a non-regular work for both males and females dismal 115th in economic opportunity and has meant that people are increasingly reluctant to commit to marriage and144th in political empowerment---the latter childrearing, which, in combination with a being by far the worst of any advanced restrictive immigration policy, has meant that industrial country. This paradox (no other Japan is aging faster than any other large country in the top 20 of the UNHD index is also country.12 The Japanese population has been in the bottom 50 of the WEF index of gender shrinking, from its historic high of 128.5 million equality) is largely attributable to Japan’s in 2009 to 124.2 million in 2020. (If this trend employment system, and to the inherent were to continue, there could be as few as 88 limitations of what Ayako Kano has called million people by 2055, with 38% of that “state feminism” (state sponsorship and co- population aged 65 or older, supported by a optation of gender issues), particularly under 14 workforce that will have been cut in half to just the aegis of the LDP and Abe Shinzo. At issue 45 million.) Even under less alarmingis whether a few recent major initiatives in the scenarios, and despite the stimulus afforded by areas of the provision of childcare, parental Abenomics, Japan may find it increasingly leave, work hours and tax policy, in addition to difficult to encourage investment, avoida number of ambitious but completely declining consumption of goods and services voluntary targets, promotional and educational and deflation, manage its public debt (already activities, are adequate to address these the world’s highest relative to GDP), ordemographic and economic challenges.