Goodbye Kimono

By Louisa Wright

Opportunities in foreign firms

Sanae Suzuki graduated in the class of '82 from Tokyo University's faculty of law and, diploma in hand, passed the senior civil service test. One government ministry indicated that a job was waiting. But Suzuki, 23, like many other career-minded Japanese women, decided that most Japanese employers would expect her to serve tea, even to male colleagues from the same class, and perform clerical duties that offered little chance of advancement. So she joined the Tokyo office of the Boston Consulting Group, an American company that specializes in international marketing and other services. Few Japanese corporations promote the cause of equal rights for women, according to Suzuki, and that made her angry. "We were never discriminated against as women until we began looking for jobs," she says. "We competed with men and passed entrance examinations to high schools and colleges. And at the last minute, bang! That's where foreign companies come to everyone's mind."

The new breed of Japanese women graduates from leading universities are shunning traditional, largely clerical roles in Japanese companies for foreign firms that acknowledge their ability and offer more pay and promotion hopes. "The educated women of Japan are still an unused resource in the professions," says Owen Erickson, senior vice president and general manager of Bank of America in Tokyo, which hires about 25 female college graduates a year.

An estimated 80% of 1,118 major Japanese companies will not hire any women graduates this year, according to a survey by Nippon Recruit Center, a private research and publishing firm. The women they hire will be coming straight from high school. Moreover, once employed, women face discrimination in, or outright exclusion from, most training programs and are rarely in a position to receive such benefits as transportation, housing and family allowances, which are available to heads of households. Except in a few jobs like nursing, they are also excluded by law from working between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. and are thus deprived of extra money from overtime or night shifts. Overall, Japanese women make up 39% of the work force but earn, on average, only 53% as much as their male counterparts (the U.S. figure: 59%).

Japanese employers claim that most women leave their careers for marriage, but the Nippon Recruit Center's survey shows that among female college graduates, one in three wants to work until retirement and nearly half hope to return to work after childbearing. "It's a vicious circle," complains Yoko Kirino, 25, a graduate of Tokyo University's faculty of law who works for the Morgan Guaranty Trust Co. "Women want to quit because the circumstances aren't that great and they're under a lot of pressure from their husbands. Meanwhile, the fact that women quit is widely used as an excuse not to improve conditions."

Despite the prevailing Japanese view that foreign firms hire female graduates because they cannot attract topnotch men, many U.S. banking offices employ these women precisely for their talents and their performance. Says one American banker: "Men are spoiled from the start in this culture. What the women get in terms of recognition or success they really have to earn."

Yet even in the foreign firms, the job scope remains restricted. Most women work in operations, credit analysis or personnel. Very few are in marketing, where the real power and money lie; Japanese firms are simply not accustomed to dealing with women on this level. Marketing in Japan requires a cultivation of trust, often with elaborate entertaining in bars, where a woman executive might not feel welcome. American banks are still unwilling to push their powerful clients to that point, but foreign firms are increasingly bringing their female officers to intercorporate functions like parties and receptions. "The first time it happens, the Japanese think it is exotic," explains one banker. "But the next time they bring along one of their own trusted women."

Most often, professional commitment means sacrifice and frustration. Marriages fall victim to the male ethos. The government is far more progressive than the private sector in hiring women, but its record is less than exemplary. Although women make up 21% of Japan's civil servants (in contrast with 37% in the U.S.), they hold a mere 1.7% of managerial positions (against the U.S.'s 17.8%). Of 2,767 judges and assistant judges in 1982, only 79 were women. In the Diet, only 27 seats of 748 are occupied by women (in the U.S. House and Senate, women hold 24 of the 535 seats). Foreign firms may end up showing Japanese employers what they are missing. Says John Johnson, a vice president at Bankers Trust: "These women are the cream of the crop, and Japan is giving them away.'' --By Louisa Wright. Reported by Neil Gross and Yurinori Ishikawa/Tokyo

With reporting by Neil Gross, Yurinori Ishikawa/Tokyo This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.