<論文>高学歴化は「職場の花」を解放したか? --「女の子資本」仮説の検証から見る事務職におけるジェンダー秩序の持続--

Abstract

In the 1990s, Japan experienced "a second educational expansion" in terms of women's higher education, with more women being enrolled in 4-year university courses rather than in 2-year junior college courses, as in the 1970s and 1980s. This paper investigates whether this decreasing gender gap in education has affected gender equality in the white-collar workplace, where women were once assigned only low-skilled and peripheral roles with little on-the-job training. Before the educational expansion took place, this gender inequality in the workplace was reflected in the fact that employers gave more favorable treatment to the female graduates of junior colleges (rather than those who had completed 4 years at university) and to graduates in less technical fields of study, like the humanities and home economics. Drawing on the theory of "Feminine Capital" proposed by Fujimoto (2004) and utilizing quantitative data obtained from the SSM (Social Stratification and social Mobility) survey conducted in 2005 and 2015, this paper examines whether this pattern has changed since the 1990s. Results show that while junior college graduates are no longer favored, graduates in the humanities and home economics fields are still favored as white-collar workers in large Japanese enterprises, with only a moderate downward trend being observed. These results suggest that employers still expect women to be assigned less technical jobs. It is concluded that while the gender gap in education has indeed shrunk, that change has not yet resulted in the advancement of women's status in the white-collar workplace.