Japanese Women Working provides a wide range of perspectives on the study of working women in Japan in the twentieth century. The contributors--including historians, economists, anthropologists and management specialists from both Japan and the Western world--address issues of state policy toward and management of working women, and at the same time also provides accounts of the experiences of particular groups of workers: domestic staff, hospital workers, textile workers, miners, homeworkers and professional housewives.

The essays in this volume span a period of rapid economic change in Japan and examine the country in its developing and its industrialized state, demonstrating the importance of the overall economic environment as well as cultural factors in determining women's positions in the labor market.