Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper explores the experiences of Japanese women who are employed locally and work with their co-ethnic managers in Japanese-owned workplaces located in the United States. Although the overall gendered nature of the dynamics between these women and men in their workplaces—such as the division of labor within their workplaces, and its symbolic importance—does not change dramatically, new elements emerge in transnational workplaces, and they are flexibly given gendered meanings and added to the gendered way of understanding and organizing workplaces. The sense of Japanese male managers of endangered masculinity contributes to this process of gendering. In addition, ethnicity comes to light in the United States, where Japanese people perceive and construct ethnic differences more readily. Many Japanese male managers re-construct the discourse of "Japanese womenness" in the workplace context, by conflating the discourse of gender reenacted and the set of newly perceived and emphasized ethnic differences. While Japanese-owned work organizations provide Japanese women with relatively easy access to paid employment and possible visa acquisition, working with those who know how to exploit the cultural discourses of gender and ethnicity and reconstruct it to their advantage in the ethnic enclave such as Japanese-owned work organizations sometimes results to the detriment of Japanese female local hires.