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The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of women in the Japanese workplace. Data obtained from in-depth interviews and questionnaires, shows that the Japanese workplace is in a state of change moving toward a higher level of opportunity for female workers. While similar to the circumstances experienced by Western women, the changes which Japanese women are experiencing have their own history and thus are analyzed from a non-Western perspective. Some key aspects of the analysis include: training, separate positions for men and women, tasks, and perceptions of gender discrimination. For men and women who held the same jobs it was found that the majority of training experiences were gender neutral. This is consistent with the fact that Japanese companies must make training equal as mandated by the 1985 Equal Employment Opportunity Law. In the workplace, however, discrimination has taken the form of separate positions for men and women. While there were informants who were both supportive and un-supportive of job separation, it was clear that this practice resulted in lower salaries and fewer high level positions for women. When males and females held the same positions, 17% of women were given different duties. These duties included serving tea, cleaning, and hostessing, all of which are tasks generally done by a wife for her husband. Thus in some instances domestic roles determine tasks assigned in the workplace. From the informants' responses a Japanese definition of gender discrimination was formulated. Culturally, gender discrimination was noted in terms of treating women differently than men, but also included improper sexual advances. A full 80% of the study's informants acknowledged the existence of gender discrimination in the Japanese workplace. Finally, from this sample it was determined that cultural relativism, internal labor market theory, and human capital theory are all compatible tools for analysis of the Japanese labor market. / Graduation date: 1998

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 263-283).

Thesis (M.A.)--West Virginia University, 2001. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains v, 68 p. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 49-68).

The British Columbia fishery is in crisis. Environmental conditions and problems with the management of the fishing resource have led to a significant reduction in stocks and created serious economic problems in the industry. Women's work is central to the fishery yet it is often unpaid, underpaid and undervalued. Policies guiding the restructuring of the industry do not take into account the unique circumstances of women in the industry. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to improve the understanding about the ways fishery policy impacts the lives of women in the fishing communities of BC. The question posed: What is the experience of women in the BC Fisheries during a climate of crisis and change? A feminist approach is applied to this qualitative study. Unstructured interviews were conducted with a sample of nine women who have worked in the industry and are impacted by closures and cutbacks. Findings reveal a devastating magnitude of loss for these women and their families; a great mistrust of the motives of the Federal government and its policies; and a multitude of strategies used in their struggle for survival. The critical inequities in the fishing industry make this study particularly relevant to social work. Further research is warranted to develop adjustment, programs that address these inequalities and meet the needs of women in the coastal communities of BC. Limitations of thisstudy and suggestions for future research are discussed in the light of these findings.

In the 1990s nationally representative and detailed household survey data became available for the first time in South Africa, opening up opportunities to examine some of the key movements in the labour market especially. This thesis investigates one of these: the continued and dramatic rise in female labour force participation that has occurred in post-apartheid South Africa over the period 1995 to 2001. The rise in women's participation, also referred to as the 'feminisation' of the labour market, is a phenomenon that has been observed and analysed in many countries around the world, and yet has remained largely undocumented in South Africa. The 'feminisation' that has been recorded in the international literature generally refers to the rise in women's share of the labour force coupled with a rise in women's share of employment. What is striking in the South African case, however, is that over the period under review here regular employment opportunities in the formal sector of the economy have been indisputably limited, and yet female labour force participation has continued to increase. The increase in participation has translated mainly into a rise in unemployment and in generally low-paying forms of self-employment in the informal sector. This raises the question why so many more women chose to enter the labour market over this period in spite of their dismal prospects, a question that is explored as far as possible in this study given the constraints imposed by the data available. This thesis is presented in three main parts. The first part consists of a review of the economic theory of female labour supply and a review of the international literature on the trends, causes and consequences associated with the rise in female labour force participation over time. The second and largest part of the thesis consists of an empirical analysis of the factors driving the rise in female labour force participation in South Africa. The broad trends in the labour force between 1995 and 2001 are documented, some of the supply-side correlates of labour force participation are explored descriptively, and then the determinants of the rise in female labour force participation in South Africa over this period are tested more thoroughly in a multivariate regression and decomposition analysis. The final part of the study turns to the question of what the rise in female labour force participation has 'bought' women in terms of access to employment and earnings for those women who did have work in the period under review. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2003.

In Latin America, women's ability to participate in the paid workforce on equal terms as men is constrained by many cultural and political obstacles, and this reinforces women's unequal citizenship status. Even though unions have rarely supported women's rights historically, and are currently losing political power in the neoliberal economic context, I argue that union women have a crucial role to play in the social struggle to expand women's labor rights. Building on theories about the social construction of citizenship, I develop an original theoretical framework suggesting that civil society acts on three levels to expand citizenship rights: the individual level (working with individuals to make them more rights-conscious), within social institutions (working to ensure that policies within social institutions actually reflect the rights of individuals), and at the level of the state, where civil society contributes to the construction of new citizenship discourses. / The framework is then applied to the Mexican case. Examining the rise of working class feminism in the context of the debt crisis and transition to economic liberalism in the 1980s, and the subsequent democratic transition in 2000, I show how these contexts led union women to participate in civil associations active at each of these three levels of citizenship construction. More specifically, this participation has been important in raising awareness of women's labor rights among women workers, challenging patriarchal union structures, and bringing the issue of women's labor rights into the debate over reform of Mexico's Federal Labor Law. I ultimately conclude that in the absence of support from a broad women's labor movement, the chances that women's labor rights will be supported by the Mexican government and Mexican unions will be low.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, School of Social Sciences, Discipline of Geographical and Environmental Studies, 2004. / "November 2003" Includes bibliographical references (leaves 307-334).

Thesis (D.B.A.)--Argosy University, Sarasota, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 164-[176]).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.