“Here, nobody asks me what have you cooked during the day. When I was in Japan, everyday people asked me what did I cook for my family. Here, in New York, they ask me what do you do” – this was the answer given by Yolanda when I asked her what is the most surprising difference between Japan and New York. In 2011, as a working wife in Japan, Yolanda moved to New York with her husband Yugi. Coming from a country that is over 6,500 miles away, Yolanda found it both relieving and frustrating at the same time to assimilate to the culture of New York.
The Memory
Life in Japan
Born in a traditional Japanese family in a small town in Western Japan, Yolanda was raised by her paternal parents, Hiro and Fumi. Yolanda also had a brother who was three years older. Throughout her childhood, she always felt that her grandparents paid much more attention to her brother than they did to her.
Yolanda held by her grandfather Hiro. Next to Hiro was her grandmother Fumi and her brother Jo. Since both of Yolanda’s parents worked when Yolanda was a baby, she spent most of her time with her grandparents.
In Japan’s traditional culture, when a woman marries a man, she becomes a member of the man’s family, and she no longer belongs to her original families; on the other hand, men are seen as those who bring women into families. This directly leads to the perception that women’s social status is much lower than men’s, because women cannot help expand the size of their families.
“I always felt that I was less than my brother. A family should not be like that,” said Yolanda. Trying to escape from her family, Yolanda studied extremely hard because she knew from a very young age that education was the only thing that could help her to be independent. With an unusually high GPA, she obtained the special permission to attend Doshisha University without taking any college assessment exams. After graduating with a degree in English Literature, Yolanda worked in the international industry, in which she was hired as a sales associate at Panasonic Corporation.
Yolanda with her college friends in Osaka, Japan. (Yolanda: the first person from the right on the top row)
There are two types of jobs in Japan: the first are professional positions, the second are supportive positions. For professional positions, if employees work hard, they have the opportunity to be promoted and move to the top of the management team. With supportive positions, however, which include receptionists, assistants, and secretaries, employees do not have much freedom when it comes to promotions and decisions making. Women in Japan were given the second type of jobs, so their major responsibilities were making copies of documents, booking tickets, and sending e-mails.
Yolanda, with her ambition and working ethics, was the first female employee with a professional job in her office in Kyoto. Within two years, she was promoted to work in Korean division with Samsung and LG.
One day, one of the supervisors told Yolanda, “don’t forget you are hired as a woman first”. Male employees expect Yolanda to work both as a “man” who made decisions and as a “woman” who provided most of the administrative support. “In the office, I was working as a ‘man’ and a ‘woman’. I could barely breathe”, said Yolanda. When she wanted to turn to other female employees for more support, rarely was there someone who was willing to help her. Female employees kept telling Yolanda that she needed to work harder because she was paid a higher salary. Yolanda was always under high pressure. What hurt her the most was not the male dominance in the Japanese workforce, but the fact that women gave into it.
“It is very sad – the greatest enemy can be ourselves.”
After two years of working at Panasonic Corporation, Yolanda decided to quit her job as an international technological sales associate. Yolanda’s friends and relatives thought she would be a housewife afterward, but they were all wrong. Yolanda resumed college. This time, she was accepted by Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, and she enrolled in a program to pursue a master degree in psychology.
The Decision
Moving to New York
15 years ago, when Yolanda met Yugi, she was a working woman.
“We were very good friends. We talked about everything. It had been like that for one year until Yugi told me he planned to move to another city” (Yolanda).
When Yugi told Yolanda that he was moving to another city, Yolanda suddenly felt that Yugi, still her friend at the time, was so important to her. She immediately told Yugi, “don’t go”. After that, Yugi stayed in Kyoto with Yolanda, and they started dating. After six months, Yugi proposed to Yolanda. Looking at the beautiful ring that was waiting for her answer, Yolanda hesitated. Before giving out the “yes” or “no” answer, Yolanda told Yugi that she would not quit her job to be a housewife. “That will not make any difference. Marry me,” said Yugi. “Yes!” Yolanda burst into tears.
After marrying Yolanda, Yugi also agreed to divide housework with Yolanda. This is extremely rare in Japan because women are expected to complete all the housework by themselves. In Japan, housework is women’s responsibility. One time, when Yugi was cleaning the floor, Yolanda suddenly had a sad feeling for Yugi. She knew that almost none of the married men in Japan even touched the mop. She stopped her husband and said, “I am sorry to let you do this.” After Yolanda’s apology, Yugi said, “don’t be sorry. It’s not your choice. Housework as females’ responsibility is just something somebody decided in the past. when I am doing the housework, you don’t need to apologize. Instead, you can say ‘thank you.’” Hearing this, Yolanda was deeply moved. “He has been supporting me even when we were just friends”, said Yolanda during the interview.
One day in early 2011, Yugi told her that he was promoted by his firm to work at its headquarter in New York. At that time, Yugi was working for one of the top four international accounting firms in Osaka, Japan. And working at the headquarter of the firm has been Yugi’s dream for years. However, Yolanda just obtained her license in clinical psychotherapy, and she was about to embark her own journey as a therapist in Osaka. She did not want to quit before she started her clinical practice. When Yugi told Yolanda about the promotion, Yolanda broke into silence. She recalled that Yugi had been her support throughout her business career in Japan, no matter how other people perceived her as an “irresponsible wife who did not do all the house chores”. While supporting Yolanda as a working woman, Yugi also suffered discriminations by the male-centric society in Japan. Yugi’s co-workers saw Yugi as a man who was too scared of his wife because he agreed to share housework. Although discriminated in the workplace, Yugi determinedly supported Yolanda to work at Panasonic and pursue her interest in Psychology.
After recollecting all the precious memory shared with Yugi, Yolanda smiled at her husband and said, “you’ve been supporting me for so many years. Now it’s my turn to support you”.
Yolanda and Yugi at the Yankee Stadium in New York. They have been married for more than 15 years.
On October 15th, 2011, Yolanda and Yugi got on the plane to New York. On the plane, Yolanda could not stop herself from wondering: what will New York look like? I saw the Statue of Liberty on television, will I see the Statue while the plane is landing? Most importantly, are women in New York discriminated in the workforce? Do women in New York quit their jobs after they get married? With all these questions in her head, Yolanda arrived in New York.
Everything was so unfamiliar for Yolanda in New York. Language, people, community . . . When Yolanda arrived in New York, the first thing she thought about was how to participate in the American workforce. Although she was a licensed psychotherapist in Japan, her license was not valid in New York. She had to go to the local college to fulfill extra college credits in order to be a certified New York psychotherapist. With language barriers, Yolanda had a very hard time catching up with native English-speaking students. Meanwhile, Yugi was extremely busy due to his new position at the headquarter. Very often he had to work until two o’clock in the morning. As a result, Yolanda and Yugi communicated with each other much less frequently. Yolanda felt that she was left behind by her husband and the mainstream of New York.
“I gave up my career; I did not have any friends; I did not know how to spend my time here in New York.”
When Yolanda agreed to move with her husband, she thought about not only her husband’s dream, but also her own dream. United States – isn’t it a country where women are able to be recognized as leaders in various fields; isn’t it a land of fair opportunities where women have the freedom to make decisions independently without duress? Getting tired of people who belittle female leaders in her home country, Yolanda saw moving to the United States as a chance to free herself from society’s mold in Japan.
However, not all the things progressed as Yolanda expected. Right after Yolanda moved to New York, she took an English class at the Japanese American Association of New York. She wanted to make some new friends with similar cultural backgrounds in New York. However, Yolanda found her experiences reminiscent of those she had escaped in Japan.
She was disappointed; she thought, in New York, in the United States, she would find Japanese women who valued themselves equal as their husbands and male peers; she thought she could find someone who was different, someone who was like her. Yolanda could not force herself to be friends with those students who exchanged their husbands’ business cards.
“This is not what I look for. I want to be free.”
The Glass Ceiling
How to Break It
After living in New York for seven years, Yolanda still thinks about her female co-workers at Panasonic and the Japanese students she met at the Japanese American Association of New York. Sometimes, she wonders what was the biggest obstacle that hindered her from being a working woman in Japan? In the workforce, the glass ceiling is referred to an invisible barrier that prevents women from rising. It exists in Japan; it also exists in New York.
According to an article published in 2016 by Tokyo Weekender, it will take enormous efforts to eliminate sexism in Japan’s workforce.
Tokyo Weekender. “Sexism in the City: Will Men and Women Ever Be Equal in Japan’s Workforce?” September 16, 2016. Accessed on 13 May, 2017.
As if the sexism were not bad enough, the current Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe cut the target of 30% women in leadership positions to 15%. When talked about Abe’s policy in female leadership, Yolanda expressed her complicated feelings. She said it was outrageous that there was such a huge jump for the target rate of female leadership in Japan. But at the same time, 30% as a target rate is unrealistic. The resistance against female leadership is huge, and it comes from denials by both men and women. “Even my mother thought I should quit my job to be a housewife. Being the first woman with a professional job at Panasonic did not sound exciting at all for my mother”, said Yolanda, “she thought women could not compete with men in the workforce, so housewife was a better alternative for women.” Yolanda’s mother is one of the many women who would prefer being a housewife in Japan.
The imbalance between male and female employees also exists in the American society. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2015, 39.2% of the female employees are in managerial positions. The percentage in the U.S. looks much better than the percentage in Japan, but public and private firms should still continue striking for equality between men and women. There is another major barrier that separates male and female workers in the U.S. workforce: the salaries.
On the left: “Women in the Labor Force”. United States Department of Labor. Accessed on 12 May, 2017. On the right: “Young Women Outpacing Young Men in College Completion”. Pew Research Center. Accessed on 12 May, 2017.
From the graphs above, one can see that although women have outpaced men in college performance since the 1990s, they earned much less than men. In 2014, the median annual earnings for women are $39,621; for men, the earnings are $50,383. In fact, the calculation using these two earnings showed that women earned 27.16% less than men in 2014. According to the graph on the right, women do have the ability to earn as much as men’s salaries, but why are women paid less in the workforce?
Who placed the glass ceiling over women? The answer is ourselves – humans, which include men and women who live in societies that cultivate the stereotypes on both genders. The cultural norms in many countries are that women should take care of their husbands and families, whereas men should be the main providers of financial support. Even if Abe Shinzo sets the target rate for female leadership back to 30%, it is very unlikely that Japan can reach 30%, because the gender norms in Japan have been very inflexible for generations.
New York’s more liberal environment gives Yolanda some space to breathe. Although not used to the culture of New York when she first arrived, now Yolanda felt more confident with her own identity. In New York, she can be a wife and a working woman at the same time. Seven years into New York, She took enough classes in Long Island University and fulfilled the requirements to be a psychologist in the United States. She volunteers as a hotline operator in a domestic violence non-profit organization. She and Yugi invite their friends from various cultural backgrounds to their barbecue parties every Summer. For Yolanda, she always believes that no matter the location, both women and men have unlimited potential in the workforce.
“Women should think of themselves as people, not a particular gender. They can have many options. They can create many options. They are free.”
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