Women's higher education in Japan: Family background, economic factors, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Law

Abstract

Since the mid-1980s there has been a striking increase in the propensity of young Japanese women to attend four-year universities. During this same period, the Japanese Diet, in 1985, passed the Equal Employment Opportunity Law, which focused on improving women's access to career employment. This paper uses micro data from the Japanese Panel Survey on Consumers (JPSC) to investigate the importance of socioeconomic and demographic factors, as well as the EEO Law, in determining the higher education decisions of young women in Japan. We find that one of the most important factors for determining whether or not a young woman attends university is whether or not her mother attended university. Other important factors we identify include whether or not her father attended university, whether or not the young woman attended juku in high school, family income, and attendance at private secondary school. Data limitations prevent drawing strong conclusions about the role of the passage of the EEO Law, but our results suggest that the passage of the law was associated with an increase in the propensity of young women to choose university over junior college.

Equal Employment Opportunity Law and the gender wage gap in Japan: A cohort analysis

“…It has been expected that the EEOL expanded women's employment in workplaces that were traditionally male-dominated. Several previous studies have found that young women of recent cohorts in Japan acquired more 4-year university education than older cohorts did and that they majored in fields that are more oriented toward ambitious career plans (Edwards 1994;Edwards and Pasquale 2003). If the post-EEOL cohorts of women had more human capital when they entered the labor market, then later cohorts of women are likely to perform better than previous cohorts.…”

Education and Marriage Decisions of Japanese Women and the Role of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act

“…Higher Education and the EEOA The role of the EEOA law in young women's decisions with regard to post-high-school education is addressed in Edwards and Pasquale (2003). Using micro-data from the first wave of the Japanese Panel Survey on Consumers (JPSC), Edwards and Pasquale's analysis holds constant family background, demographic factors, and economic conditions in estimating the effect of the passage of the EEOA on the higher education decisions of young Japanese women.…”

The Equal Employment Opportunity Law and labor force behavior of women in Japan

“…As Table A1 shows, the proportion of women obtaining a 4-year university education was 13 percent for cohorts born from 1958 to 1962, while the same proportion was 20 percent for those born from 1973 to 1977. The introduction of the EEOL might have made it worthwhile for women to obtain more education (Edwards and Pasquale, 2003).…”