Documents Komagawa, Tomoko 1 results

"Gender-based job segregation in companies is the main cause of the gender gap in pay and careers. This paper sets out to examine the processes of formation and transformation of gender-based job segregation between the 1960s and present. The focus is on bank clerical staff, a field of employment with a large gender career gap in a representative industry that embodies Japanese-style business management. The examination by this paper clarifies the following facts. Male university graduates are assigned with priority to “lending” and “corporate and individual financing,” roles in which they build capacity and form careers through regular internal transfers. But this depends on the presence of male high school graduates who accept internal work and tend to have limited scope for promotions and elevation, and females who take care of clerical work. The aspect of females gradually raising the ceilings on their careers is important, based on measures for “utilizing women” in the workforce. However, this “utilization of women” by banks is no more than a measure designed to overcome occasional management problems, and has merely created new “women's jobs.” Meritocratic management and the “utilization of women” have transformed gender-based job segregation into a gender gap in promotions. "