This book shows how, during the period of the Japanese economic miracle, a distinctive female employment system was developed alongside, and different from, the better known Japanese employment system which was applied to male employees. Women, Work and the Japanese Economic Miracle describes and analyses the place of female workers in the cotton textile industry, which was a crucially important industry with a large workforce. In presenting detailed data on such key issues as recruitment systems, management practices and the working experience of the women involved, it demonstrates the importance for Japan's postwar economy of harnessing female labour during these years.

Since economists traditionally focus on market activities, women's non-wage labour has not been registered in works on economic development. On the other hand, women's wage labour has been described as supplementary or marginal to the household income as well as to economic development as a whole. The contributors to this collection did their research on women workers in countries from the core, the semiperiphery, and the periphery. The eight articles are introduced by Kathryn Ward, who presents a critical overview of the literature on women workers and globalization. In Ward's opinion we have to develop new definitions for some key concepts in our theories on women and work. These concepts should aim at including housework and work in the informal sector, and women's various acts of resistance. Ward also suggests new perspectives from which we should theorize about women's work in the process of global restructuring.

DIVA study of the "modern" woman in Japan before World War II./div

The Reproductive Bargain reveals the institutional sources of labor insecurities behind Japan’s postwar employment system. This economic juggernaut’s decline cannot be understood without reference to the reproductive bargain. The historical terms of the reproductive bargain rests on the establishment of company citizenship in support of a standard employment relationship, privileging the male breadwinner in calculations for benefits in exchange for the salarymen working long hours in relatively secure jobs at the enterprise and relying on women’s unpaid reproductive labor in the family and increasingly on women’s waged work in nonstandard jobs. Such institutionalized relationships, formerly the engines of growth and stability, drag economic expansion and employment security. Gendering institutional analysis is a key to deciphering the enigma of Japanese capitalism.

Contrary to all expectations, Japan's long-term recession has provoked no sustained political movement to replace the nation's malfunctioning economic structure. The country's basic social contract has so far proved resistant to reform, even in the face of persistently adverse conditions. In Race for the Exits, Leonard J. Schoppa explains why it has endured and how long it can last. The postwar Japanese system of "convoy capitalism" traded lifetime employment for male workers against government support for industry and the private (female) provision of care for children and the elderly. Two social groups bore a particularly heavy burden in providing for the social protection of the weak and dependent: large firms, which committed to keeping their core workforce on the payroll even in slow times, and women, who stayed home to care for their homes and families. Using the exit-voice framework made famous by Albert Hirschman, Schoppa argues that both groups have chosen "exit" rather than "voice," depriving the political process of the energy needed to propel necessary reforms in the system. Instead of fighting for reform, firms slowly shift jobs overseas, and many women abandon hopes of accommodating both family and career. Over time, however, these trends have placed growing economic and demographic pressures on the social contract. As industries reduce their domestic operations, the Japanese economy is further diminished. Japan has also experienced a "baby bust" as women opt out of motherhood. Schoppa suggests that a radical break with the Japanese social contract of the past is becoming inevitable as the system slowly and quietly unravels.

The economy of Japan, with its high rates of growth, exemplary productivity levels, overall stability, and resilience in the face of financial and other crises, has been one of the wonders of the postwar world. In this book, which has since its first publication in 1981 been a standard text and reference work on the postwar economy, one of Japan's leading economist-scholars describes its workings, its roots in the prewar and wartime years, and its structure and institutions. For this revised second edition, the author has written several new chapters, added data bringing the discussion up to the 1990s, and reorganized the presentation.

This volume examines the nature of married women's participation in the economies of three East Asian countries—Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. In addition to asking what is similar or different about women's economic participation in this region of the world compared to Western societies, the book also asks how women's work patterns vary across the three countries.