conducted by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) of 5,681 Japanese firms
with over 30 employees, a substantial portion of these respondents reported they solely
employed men for sales and technical positions. In all companies, the women who actually
occupied the “sogoshoku” types of positions were a minority.
In contrast, the majority of Chinese women working in Japanese firms are not the
typical “OLs.” Most don’t wear uniforms. Instead of providing general office assistance to
male workers, they worked as sales and marketing representatives. Among the 38
informants, very few worked in “ippanshoku”. Although some of them were not even
aware of the different career courses in practices in some Japanese firms, two women
whose employers still held “course employment system” made a point of telling me that
they were in “sogoshoku” instead of “ippanshoku”, different from most their Japanese
women coworkers.
The question therefore arises: What gives Chinese immigrant women the power to
trespass the gendered career boundaries in the corporate Japan? In this section, I describe
and analyze the opportunities as well as the constraints Chinese immigrant women face in
their career development in Japanese firms. I argue that Chinese women entered Japanese
firms as both Chinese immigrants and women. Their career experiences are therefore
affected by the economic opportunities brought by the booming transnational economy
between Japan and China in recent years and the organizational constraints imposed on
women as well as foreign employees.
6
Among firms with “course system”, 90 percent reported “ippanshoku” were solely occupied by
women. 85 percent of them only have 10 percent of the “sogoshoku” positions occupied by women.
Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfara,
accessed on Jan. 16, 2008.
9
Convention