IMF blog urges Japan to make more use of women workers

encourage women to take on more full-time work and also have children

Wow! Women are gonna be busy, aren't they. How about getting the men to stop being salary parasites and increase their productivity? Then, get Abe and his cronies to get their thumbs out of their butts and do something about the childcare crisis. And, after that, they need to change the labor laws to ensure women get equal pay for equal work and are not exploited by the male dominated working culture. I can't see any of this happening in the next 50 years. There's more chance Japan will start importing cheap labor from the Philippines and Cambodia.

Now why would a female (the ones I know and hear of) enter a workforce of stress, being overworked, passive aggressive bosses, and other health risk issues plaguing male and career seeking women workers, when they can enjoy (while the kids are at school all day and then juku and/or clubs) walking the malls with their friends, tennis clubs, Yoga classes, tea ceremony lessons, cafes/restaurants/etc with friends, spas and so on. Many choose to work part time to make some pocket money, enjoy the flexibility of taking time off and enjoy life.

The point of the blog was that Japan needed to grow its population. The reason it needs to grow its population is because they need warm bodies to work hard and cover up government financial waste and fraud. So future generations can suffer karoshi while trying to pay off the debts of previous generations.

I agree with the points about women, but in an age of disruption, we shouldn't be talking about "lifetime employment".

Japan needs to switch to meritocratic employment practices where able workers can switch jobs. This would naturally be good for women, because many take a break or could take a break for childbirth. With lifetime employment, no-one can tell their boss where to go, which in Japan's case leads to ridiculous amount of overtime, transfers at short notice to far flung subsidiaries that split families, and power harassment. Lifetime employment only benefits mediocre yes men who sacrifice everything to the company. I suspect many wives, who get a pay packet and a husband who keeps out of the way, like it too.

Good luck with this! Japan needs  MASSIVE overall changes in how it works for families etc to have some hope in hell of any balance so babies are even a consideration.

With the number of young plummeting there is soon going to be no way for Japan to turn this around even if the birthrate miraculously shot up to 2 or more, there will soon simply be too few young people to make a difference, the cliff approaches!

Now why would a female (the ones I know and hear of) enter a workforce of stress, being overworked, passive aggressive bosses, and other health risk issues plaguing male and career seeking women workers

That's exactly right, and the wife with a docile paypacket husband is the big winner in Japanese society. She even gets to moan about her self-sacrificing husband who comes home after 9pm not doing housework or all the other things pampered wives complain about. She can refuse her husbands' advances as a societal norm. If they split up, she'll automatically get the kids and can deny all access.

The problem is though that not many men earn enough any more to support a family on a single full-time wage. Men's wages across the First World have fallen significantly in real terms in the past forty years. To raise a family, it is increasingly important for women to contribute financially. In Japan, any man not earning enough to raise a family is seen as a loser, someone who is not marriage material. It doesn't matter how kind, how funny, how attentive, how cool he is. In the UK, the wife outearns the husband in one couple out of three. In Japan, those men would be losers.

The working age population, aged 15-64, is currently falling by about a million a year. This probably matters much more than how fast the total population, with all the old people, is falling, 350,000 a year or whatever it is. Millions of Japanese women attend higher education only to fall out of the workforce or end up in menial part time jobs. It is a huge waste.

Japan, the country as a whole, is at the start of a major transition, and the system as it is now, is ill prepared to deal with the problems.

The suggestions/urges coming from the IMF are nothing new. It's going to take a major whack up-side Abe's head for him to actually do something about it, and not just pay lip-service and "try".

Maybe Harumafuji could be the one to do the slap!

It's nice suggestio but Japanese women rather go to college to get better job and they don't want to become laborers. They even avoid marriage.

The IMF can get stuffed - they are part of the problem, not the solution.

so america dictates our foreign policy, and the IMF our domestic policy. why doesn't japan elects real leaders with youth, vitality and new ideas? the old amukari types may be stuck in their expensive lifestyles, and Abe may be trying to go back to Meiji, but hey, enough is enough. Japan has so much potential. Lost the war...move on. i watched the high school robot wars on tv yesterday. also watched the bird man last summer. there is the potential there...

These are nice suggestions but I'm afraid any changes now will be "too little, too late." That ship sailed a long time ago.

The IMF typifies much of what is wrong with the world. Bloodsucking parasites!

We truly live in Dystopia now...

I agree with the points about women, but in an age of disruption, we shouldn't be talking about "lifetime employment".

Japan needs to switch to meritocratic employment practices where able workers can switch jobs. This would naturally be good for women, because many take a break or could take a break for childbirth. With lifetime employment, no-one can tell their boss where to go, which in Japan's case leads to ridiculous amount of overtime, transfers at short notice to far flung subsidiaries that split families, and power harassment. Lifetime employment only benefits mediocre yes men who sacrifice everything to the company. I suspect many wives, who get a pay packet and a husband who keeps out of the way, like it too.

Great post kohakuebisu, couldn't agree more. Corporate dinosaurs are detrimental to a healthy workplace and workforce.

IMF should clean it's own house first before commenting on Japan. IMF has more scandals and skeletons in it's closet than Japan. No doubt in part due to the infestation of the IMF with feminists who care only about their own gender and not about society as a whole.

Japan's total population is expected to decline almost 4 million by 2025

That's pretty eye opening when you consider that the total number of Japanese casualties of WW2 estimate figures range from 2.2 million to over 3.2 million.

The International Monetary Fund wants to see a shift in Japan's labor policy that would encourage women to take on more full-time work and also have children

The IMF isn't an organisation worth listening too - take a look at the West where women have the ability to work from leaving school to retirement, they have access to subsidised childcare and yet the birth rate is dropping fast which is why Western Countries are running an Open Border Policy.

Laborer shortage will no be eased by increasing women to work. Both men and women in Japan do not like to work as laborers.

I've been recommending this for the past three decades but they haven't listened to me. I hope the IMF blog gets better results.

Yes, Komeito is staffed mostly with SG Members but SG has no say in it.

Name those SG Leaders by providing proof that SG runs Komeito.

How many Christians are in the Democratic or Republic Parties, no one accuses the Christian Church to run the USA now do they?

Back on topic, yes changes are needed. Like in my country a woman taking maternity leave is guarantee a job(same salary & perks! in her company if she decides to come back. Also men can take leave to assist with child raising, etc.

In the end the couple should decide who and how their kids are raised, many of my friends back home are stay at home dad's, as their wives career and salary trumped theirs.

It's difficult to changes this with rules and regulation altough they are part of the solution. It has to come from the people. Culture changes slowly but surely

Underneath the article on women with child on duty in local council office and told to remove child...

Japanese government have to build efficient baby care facilities because younger women may marry and babies may born. Many women will not work when they can't find nice baby care facilities..

The IMF somehow has the idea that Japan’s less than replacement level birth rate has some correlation with Japanese women’s ability to gain employment in male dominated sectors of the economy. Is their any evidence of this anywhere else in the world? The evidence overwhelmingly says the opposite. Even those female professionals that are able to work wherever they wish and who have access to child care are still much likelier to have fewer children than a housewife.

This is simply a matter of another European dominanted institution seeking to impose its social imperatives on countries with a different way of doing things and who have different priorities.

Despite it’s current economic problems and it’s staggering public debt, Japanese people are wealthy enough to have choices. Women’s employment choices are more restricted than men but their overall choices are greater. For men you either work, hope you can live with your parents, or you are out on the street. Women have a huge option ー housewife. It is true that for many women being a housewife is tough. For others it means huge quantities of free time to do as they please.

You're going to open a huge daycare center?

Obviously you don't know why daycare centers are in short supply in Japan. Have you ever been in Japan?

Another thought on this - the shrinking population would not be a problem, from the perspective of the ability of the government to pay adequate pensions for the elderly, were the Japanese system not essentially a taxation-based, "pay-as-you-go" system (with a fraction coming from the GPIF).

That is, if the pension system were reformed to be based on compulsory individual savings, the majority of the population would hit pension age with an adequate level of savings to support themselves in their old age. Taxation would only be required for topping up the accounts of those who were unable to accumulate an adequate amount of savings by themselves, for example due to long periods of unemployment.

So reform, and transition from a taxation-based to a savings-based pension system. This would give people greater certainty about their futures, and their alleviated concerns would to some extent give them more confidence about bringing extra children into the world.

(Other downsides of a shrinking population are shrinking domestic demand, but in today's globalized world I don't see that this is necessarily such a big part of the problem. It just means Japanese businesses need to sell products to other countries.)

IMF blog urges Japan to make more use of women workers

Not likely after this:

https://japantoday.com/category/politics/Kumamoto-assemblywoman-causes-stir-by-bringing-7-month-old-son-into-chamber

changes are needed in social norms that discourage professional women from having families,

Not only social norms, but systems as well.

I'm rerefing specifically to the fact that daycare service is considered to be in the domain of the ministry of social welfare. Problems with the supply of adequate service for all would rapidly and vastly improve under a plain free market system.

Social welfare should be about assisting the disadvantaged, but it is no longer the case that people seeking daycare services in Japan are all disadvantaged. This is a minority case now.

IMF thinks Japanese women can work like American women. Do Japanese women repair cars? or carpenter? Many of them are bigger than Japanese men and they are stronger.

you have to stop asking them to serve tea to the men to get them working.

i am going to open a huge daycare center and make serious cash!

There are Philippine and other Asian country people who receive Work Visa and work in Japan. Japan should encourage other Asian countries to use Visa system to fill labor shortage.

Some people wrote about religion of politicians but religion has nothing to do with in Japan. Japanese people do not use religion to decide anything. Except KouMeiTou. They act anarchists.