Marriage as the “Either/Or” Phenomenon: Unmarried, Employed Women’s Views of
Marriage and Work in Japan
Japan is one of the least gender-equal industrialized countries in the world
(Brinton 1988, 1989; Fuwa 2004; Raymo 1998, 2003; Raymo &Iwasaki 2005;
Rethergord, Ogawa, & Matsukawa 2001; Tsuya & Bumpass 2004; United Nations
Human Development Report 2005). Why, then, are more and more highly educated
women choosing not to ever marry? Increasing non-marriage has often been attributed to
women’s improving economic standing. According to the economic independence
theorists (Becker 1981), women’s improved economic standing contributes to the decline
of marriage primarily because women want to avoid unequal gender burdens in the
household. For example, a recent study found that Japanese women’s high economic
standing decreased their chances of entering into first marriages (Ono 2003). However,
others (Raymo & Iwasaki 2005) have pointed out this theory’s limitations in its exclusive
emphasis on women’s economic independence in such a highly gender-traditional society
as Japan. In other words, this contemporary theory fails to address how women’s limited
economic opportunities in the labor market influence their marital chances.
Marital chances of women with high incomes, in fact, vary depending on how a
particular country’s labor and marriage markets value women’s work. For example, in the
United States, two distinct characteristics in the labor market and the marriage market
have promoted women with high economic standing to enter into marriages: (1) the
increasing importance of women’s roles in the labor market (Oppenheimer 1988; 1997)
and (2) the resulting positive view of women with high economic standing in the
marriage market (Sweeney & Cancian 2004). The high rate of both women’s economic
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