Japanese and South Korean management are 85% male. Men are presumed more competent, favoured in promotions, treated as potential managers. Women are cheap underlings, mere subordinates. Whatever their skills or aspirations, Japanese women may be expected to mother, pour the tea, run
Great analysis as usual. You may be interested in a light-hearted but serious examination of many of these issues in Japan through the "Full-time Wife Escapist" drama (https://www.netflix.com/title/81410833). It is a refreshingly frank examination of many of the constraints and expectations placed on women. If culture is a leading indicator of change, there may be hope yet.
As a Japanese man, I couldn't agree with the content of the article. It seems that the author is discussing the year 2023 using relatively old literature from the 1990s and beyond.
It is true that there is a gender pay gap in Japan, and it is also true that it is always women who abandon their careers when they have children, and that many of them end up working part-time.
However, I don't think this is the result of discrimination against women by companies, or due to patriarchal values.
It was only 30 years ago that there was gender discrimination in the workplace (not only discrimination against women, but men were also not allowed to become nurses, cabin attendants or kindergarten teachers). Since then, there has been no difference in basic pay for men and women employed in the same job. Even 20 years ago, a human resources manager who said that women were not capable would have been immediately removed from the office. I was unable to find any information on the internet about a company called “Shintani Metals” that bullies women. Is there any data to suggest that oppressing women satisfies the self-esteem of low-income men? In Japan in 2025, a law was passed to prevent women from going bankrupt in the Handsome Men's Club (this does not apply to bankruptcies among men).
I think the main reasons why the gender pay gap is not being closed are that childcare leave is a career break for both men and women, and that women tend to want to marry men who earn more than they do (there is data to support this).
In Japan, it is possible to take two years of paid childcare leave while still working, and this is also available to men. However, in many cases, this period of leave is not considered to be part of one's work history, and this is a disadvantage in Japanese companies where the length of one's work history is strongly correlated with pay and promotions. There is a marked tendency among Japanese women to want to marry men who earn more than they do (perhaps this is a patriarchal value held by women), and in many cases the man's wages are higher than the woman's. In such cases, it is financially rational for the woman to take childcare leave and interrupt her career.
It is difficult to change women's values immediately, but I think that childcare experience can also be put to use in work, so I hope that companies will start to count childcare leave as part of a person's work history.
I wonder how you are measuring the pay gap. The almost 20% US pay gap is simply not true. Around 1970, my workshop group with Gary Becker found a 6% residual pay difference that we could not explain. More recent extensive work has found a smaller residual. Surely, if a firm could reduce its wage expense by 20@ by hiring only women, it would do so; and if the women had the same value (marginal productivity) as men other firms would have to also hire women and the “gap” would be bid away very quickly.
I have been living and working in korea for 13 years, most of what i read on the country triggers eye rolls but this is very deep.
Thank you.
I would like to ask one precision and share one further thought.
- did you manage to find any discrepancy between large companies and small / medium sized businesses? Large companies are behind western counterparts, but I can honestly see a positive movement in Samsung Electronics since I joined. I also understand Korean SMBs can have less professional management (owner - patriarchal culture) so i am curious about the data.
- i think an aggravating effect to the above is the dark side of human networks in lifetime employment organizations. In all companies, the org chart is one thing, the actual flow of information another.
In most tech companies, where tenure is ~2 years, information has to flow along clear lines and there are clearer procedures and r&r in place in explicit written form. It s hard to have sexist procedures written down.
In employment for life companies, r&r, information flows are more informal because almost everybody is an incumbent and knows what these are. So it s easy for women, foreigners and other new elements to be excluded thereby aggravating the situation for the 'foreign' elements.
Seeing Japan and South Korea collapse into economic irrelevance because they hate women so badly will be amusing. I hope it happens quickly and brutally.
So your proposed solution is government gender quotas and civil rights lawsuits for perceived disparate impact?
That seems like an extreme solution over a 20% - > 35% difference in the "pay gap"* that you think is mostly localized in low end labor that probably doesn't even cover the cost of child care.
I'd also caution using Singapore or HK. These are tiny city state trading hubs. It's a very different niche than primary manufacturing exporters like Japan and SK. I could likely find a lot of differences across all sorts of metrics compared to the city states, but it wouldn't tell you much about what these larger countries should do.
*The fact that the 20% pay gap figure for the US is cited here, despite being debunked many times over, doesn't give me a lot of confidence in these figures.
"Japanese businesses have lobbied again legislative change, even refusing sexual harassment training. Courts routinely deny systematic discrimination. Employers cannot even be sued for sexual harassment. Employees can only ask the Ministry of Labour for mediation. Accusations of abuse are mostly ignored."
"Gender quotas were adopted in Taiwan after feminist lobbying. Women now comprise 42% of legislators. Once in power, Taiwanese women sponsor more bills and favour women’s interests."
"Over in Singapore, the People’s Action Party introduced a quota to appeal to women voters."
It's implied in the article that Japan and SK should be adopting the quotas and laws of SHKT.
Further, the wealth of statistics on "disparities" implies that these disparities are bad and should be closed, presumably via government action since the private market has chosen not to close them. That's how disparate impact law works in America.
Anyway, what is your proposed solution? Surely the point of the article isn't to just complain?
Couldn't we talk about lifetime employment without bringing in the gender wars?
Lifetime employment seems to have worked in a time and place where these countries had large young workforces that could engage in stable large scale export based manufacturing, which lo and behold tends to be male oriented.
It seems likely to me lifetime employment will die off because it relies on young people paying their dues and there aren't enough young people left in East Asia. There are a lot of other structural changes too.
Great analysis as usual. You may be interested in a light-hearted but serious examination of many of these issues in Japan through the "Full-time Wife Escapist" drama (https://www.netflix.com/title/81410833). It is a refreshingly frank examination of many of the constraints and expectations placed on women. If culture is a leading indicator of change, there may be hope yet.
As a Japanese man, I couldn't agree with the content of the article. It seems that the author is discussing the year 2023 using relatively old literature from the 1990s and beyond.
It is true that there is a gender pay gap in Japan, and it is also true that it is always women who abandon their careers when they have children, and that many of them end up working part-time.
However, I don't think this is the result of discrimination against women by companies, or due to patriarchal values.
It was only 30 years ago that there was gender discrimination in the workplace (not only discrimination against women, but men were also not allowed to become nurses, cabin attendants or kindergarten teachers). Since then, there has been no difference in basic pay for men and women employed in the same job. Even 20 years ago, a human resources manager who said that women were not capable would have been immediately removed from the office. I was unable to find any information on the internet about a company called “Shintani Metals” that bullies women. Is there any data to suggest that oppressing women satisfies the self-esteem of low-income men? In Japan in 2025, a law was passed to prevent women from going bankrupt in the Handsome Men's Club (this does not apply to bankruptcies among men).
I think the main reasons why the gender pay gap is not being closed are that childcare leave is a career break for both men and women, and that women tend to want to marry men who earn more than they do (there is data to support this).
In Japan, it is possible to take two years of paid childcare leave while still working, and this is also available to men. However, in many cases, this period of leave is not considered to be part of one's work history, and this is a disadvantage in Japanese companies where the length of one's work history is strongly correlated with pay and promotions. There is a marked tendency among Japanese women to want to marry men who earn more than they do (perhaps this is a patriarchal value held by women), and in many cases the man's wages are higher than the woman's. In such cases, it is financially rational for the woman to take childcare leave and interrupt her career.
It is difficult to change women's values immediately, but I think that childcare experience can also be put to use in work, so I hope that companies will start to count childcare leave as part of a person's work history.
I wonder how you are measuring the pay gap. The almost 20% US pay gap is simply not true. Around 1970, my workshop group with Gary Becker found a 6% residual pay difference that we could not explain. More recent extensive work has found a smaller residual. Surely, if a firm could reduce its wage expense by 20@ by hiring only women, it would do so; and if the women had the same value (marginal productivity) as men other firms would have to also hire women and the “gap” would be bid away very quickly.
Men will forego almost any amount of money in order to maintain patriarchy and male privilege.
Fascinating. It’s interesting that despite having very different gender dynamics in the work force, both of these spheres (Japan+SK and
SHKT) have astonishingly low birth rates. Does that surprise you? Makes East Asian birth rates seem like even more of a puzzle.
Wow what an article.
I have been living and working in korea for 13 years, most of what i read on the country triggers eye rolls but this is very deep.
Thank you.
I would like to ask one precision and share one further thought.
- did you manage to find any discrepancy between large companies and small / medium sized businesses? Large companies are behind western counterparts, but I can honestly see a positive movement in Samsung Electronics since I joined. I also understand Korean SMBs can have less professional management (owner - patriarchal culture) so i am curious about the data.
- i think an aggravating effect to the above is the dark side of human networks in lifetime employment organizations. In all companies, the org chart is one thing, the actual flow of information another.
In most tech companies, where tenure is ~2 years, information has to flow along clear lines and there are clearer procedures and r&r in place in explicit written form. It s hard to have sexist procedures written down.
In employment for life companies, r&r, information flows are more informal because almost everybody is an incumbent and knows what these are. So it s easy for women, foreigners and other new elements to be excluded thereby aggravating the situation for the 'foreign' elements.
Thank you for your article and research.
what about women owned businesses?
Seeing Japan and South Korea collapse into economic irrelevance because they hate women so badly will be amusing. I hope it happens quickly and brutally.
So your proposed solution is government gender quotas and civil rights lawsuits for perceived disparate impact?
That seems like an extreme solution over a 20% - > 35% difference in the "pay gap"* that you think is mostly localized in low end labor that probably doesn't even cover the cost of child care.
I'd also caution using Singapore or HK. These are tiny city state trading hubs. It's a very different niche than primary manufacturing exporters like Japan and SK. I could likely find a lot of differences across all sorts of metrics compared to the city states, but it wouldn't tell you much about what these larger countries should do.
*The fact that the 20% pay gap figure for the US is cited here, despite being debunked many times over, doesn't give me a lot of confidence in these figures.
When do I propose a solution? Nowhere in the text above do I mention civil rights lawsuits or quotas.
"Japanese businesses have lobbied again legislative change, even refusing sexual harassment training. Courts routinely deny systematic discrimination. Employers cannot even be sued for sexual harassment. Employees can only ask the Ministry of Labour for mediation. Accusations of abuse are mostly ignored."
"Gender quotas were adopted in Taiwan after feminist lobbying. Women now comprise 42% of legislators. Once in power, Taiwanese women sponsor more bills and favour women’s interests."
"Over in Singapore, the People’s Action Party introduced a quota to appeal to women voters."
It's implied in the article that Japan and SK should be adopting the quotas and laws of SHKT.
Further, the wealth of statistics on "disparities" implies that these disparities are bad and should be closed, presumably via government action since the private market has chosen not to close them. That's how disparate impact law works in America.
Anyway, what is your proposed solution? Surely the point of the article isn't to just complain?
I make zero recommendations. The whole point of the article is about lifetime employment, everything else is downstream.
Couldn't we talk about lifetime employment without bringing in the gender wars?
Lifetime employment seems to have worked in a time and place where these countries had large young workforces that could engage in stable large scale export based manufacturing, which lo and behold tends to be male oriented.
It seems likely to me lifetime employment will die off because it relies on young people paying their dues and there aren't enough young people left in East Asia. There are a lot of other structural changes too.
You really are committed to male privilege, aren’t you? What makes a society in which women are treated like dirt so appealing to you?
Comparing Russia with China seems like it would be worth while.