The Factors of Japanese Female Workers' Job Quitting for Childbirth/Childrearing

This presentation will show the factors why Japanese female workers quit their jobs for childbirth and childrearing. Despite the enforcement of Equal Employment Opportunity Act and Parental Leave Act 20 years ago, the female labor force participation rate by age in Japan still forms M-shape curve, because many women quit their jobs at the time of their pregnancy.

C. Hakim stresses on “preferences” between work and home to explain behaviors of female workers with family responsibilities; “work-centered”, “home-centered”, and “adaptive”. She presents the data that many of women are “adaptive” in Europe. She also points out the influences of relaxing labor market regulations on increasing part-time work and on intermittent careers which are typical of adaptive women.

I suppose it is also important in Japan to focus on the structure of labor market as influential factors to explain the mass of women’s behaviors. Japanese society has experienced long-term depressions during the past two decades, and firms have increased non-regular employees such as part-time and temporary workers instead of regular employees. This severe employment situation has negative influences on many female workers’ job continuity, while some firms maintain female regular employees as long-term labor force. Moreover small organizations are not so positive on parental leave while large organizations promote the leave. As a result, the job continuity rate after the first childbirth is increasing only for the regular employees in large organizations.

The results of our data analysis imply that it is effective for employees in small organizations to gain knowledge of work-life balance support systems to negotiate with their organizations and avoid job quitting. And also, it is important to support female workers searching for regular employment with work-life balance systems so as not to choose non-regular jobs in order to balance work with family lives.