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Womenomics: What Shinzo Abe and Sheryl Sandberg Have in Common

Having more women in Japan’s corporate ranks, if recent numbers are any indication, could mean growth at the macro and corporate levels.

In Japan, women who try to follow the advice of Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and “lean in” to the corporate world often find themselves up against a brick wall. Japanese society is built on the premise that men work double-digit-hour shifts and women stay at home. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says he is determined to overhaul this state of affairs in the name of恢复国家的增长率.

该国的经济问题使ABE成为妇女权利的热烈信徒 - 至少在工作场所。在过去,他因否认日本政府在绑架所谓的情况下发挥作用comfort women in Asian countriesoccupied by Japan during World War II who were forced into prostitution and forpulling the Chrysanthemum Throne out from under young Princess Aiko是,在她的男堂兄出生之后,统治皇帝秋天的孙子孙子,扭转了一个允许女性继承君主制的计划。但他认购日本的经济不会增长,除非更多女性赚取薪水,他甚至推出了他所谓的博客“闪耀!对日本,所有女人都能发光的地方” — although critics have pointed out that a Japanese speaker might read the word as “shi-ne,” the imperative of “die.”

6月24日安倍出来了with 230 proposals in his so-called third arrow of structural economic reforms. Among them were calls for measures to ease women’s access to the workplace, including an appeal to eliminate taxes that penalize married women who work; a new requirement that publicly traded companies would have to disclose the number of women holding executive positions; and a proposal to allow more foreign housekeepers to come into special economic zones of Japan, part of an effort to make it easier for Japanese women to get out of the house and go to work. And among those giving — or clicking, rather — a thumbs-up is Sandberg, whose bestselling book,依靠,去年以日语翻译出来,谁遇到了日本总理。

ABE还开始辟定日托中心,目的是到2017年增加了400,000个新设施。此类政府任务可以使妇女更容易工作的物流。日本总理在企业领导职位上的妇女的拟议配额可以提醒男性高管,该国家具有性别多样性问题。日本需要政策措施将更多的妇女带入工作场所,但企业文化和社会的期望也必须发展,亚慱体育app怎么下载Kathy Matsui, chief Japan equity strategist at Goldman Sachs Group’s global investment research division in Tokyo.

In a 1999 research paper, Matsui coined the term womenomics to describe the potential role that women could play in expanding Japan’s economy. Since then, she has continued to update her research, and Abe has cited her work in his policy speeches.

在5月30日出来的女性研究中最近的研究中,Matsui提出了从可能吸引投资者的东京金融出版商东京的调查结果。在765家上市日本公司的一项研究中,妇女经理比率最高的人在2010年至2012年的三年期间,股权的平均回报超过了10%,而妇女经理的最低百分比的公司有回报靠近零 - 甚至是负面的。她还估计,如果妇女的就业率升至男子的就业率,日本的国内生产总值可能会增加近13%。

2013年Global Gender Gap Report来自世界经济论坛,基于经济,政治,教育和健康标准的基于经济,政治,教育和健康标准的年度全国性差异审查,日本104日在136个国家的经济参与和105个整体中。在日本的背后是韩国和大部分中东。在6月份的报告中称为Closing the Gender Gap in Japan,the WEF put the rate of female participation in the labor force at 63 percent, one of the lowest among OECD countries and 79th globally. (The male participation rate was 85 percent.) The WEF report also ranks Japan at 87th place in terms of the salary gap. And women make up only 2 percent of corporate boards and less than 1 percent of executive committees.

Japan is not without ambitious women who have been able to get ahead, as well as corporate leaders who are making an effort to promote more women. Teiko Kudo became thefirst womanto crack the senior management ranks at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. this spring. Carlos Ghosn, the CEO of French-Japanese automaker Renault-Nissan, has introduced quotas to encourage women to apply for senior-level jobs in Japan.

But barriers persist. In her latest report, Matsui cited a recent survey from Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare in which 50 percent of respondents said the main reason there are so few women in corporate management was “too few females with sufficient knowledge, experience and judgment.” As in the U.S., says Matsui, in Japan there is a shortage of women with technology-related degrees. She recommends that companies take several measures to address issues facing women in the workplace, including creating more flexible work environments so that work isn’t the 80-hour-a-week proposition that it is for men.

“The way Japanese men work isn’t much fun, and if you had the option, you wouldn’t want to work either,” says Rochelle Kopp, who runs Japan Intercultural Consulting, a Chicago-based training and consulting firm that works with Japanese business executives and foreigners doing business in Japan. “For some men, the hours have gotten even worse in the last few years; with the economic problems, they have less staff.”

But in fact there is a growing shortage of labor in a broad range of industries, and that might ultimately force businesses to recruit women and offer them sufficient salaries and work-life balance to stay on. Much of the shortage is because of a shrinking and aging population, yet only 63 percent of the women work. “We don’t have natural resources in Japan,” says Matsui. “Our top resource is people, and you don’t have a lot of options unless you tap into half of your population.”


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