TOKYO \u2014 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has an unprecedented plan to boost economic growth and shore up his country’s shrinking labor force \u2014 help more women return to work.<\/p>\n
About two-thirds of Japanese women leave the workforce after the birth of their first child. Most do not return for years, if ever. It’s a major reason the employment rate of Japanese women is one of the lowest in developed economies, particularly among those married and well-educated.<\/p>\n
Abe’s government wants to change that situation for women such as Saori Tachibana.<\/p>\n
Drifting in a dead-end clerical job despite her college degree, Tachibana figured that, at 30, she had better buck up if she wanted financial independence. So, for 10 months, she juggled her full-time work with Saturday classes and studied day and night to become a certified labor consultant.<\/p>\n
Her efforts paid off with a good job at a legal and accounting firm in Tokyo. But when she got married and became pregnant, her company pressured her to leave.<\/p>\n
“They didn’t say directly for me to quit,” she said on a recent evening, sitting in a 700-square-foot apartment in Tokyo’s Koto district that she shares with her husband, Shingo, and their 2-year-old son, Harushi.<\/p>\n
“I told them that my husband was even planning to take a long child-care leave so I could keep working,” she said, “but the company wasn’t willing to let me stay.”<\/p>\n
That kind of outcome doesn’t sit well with Abe’s government, which won a convincing parliamentary election last month. It has pledged to raise Japan’s labor participation of women to the world’s highest level and is urging companies to promote women.<\/p>\n
“It is essential for the ‘power of women’ \u2014 Japan’s greatest potential which had not been leveraged fully to date \u2014 to be fully utilized,” according to Abe’s growth plan.<\/p>\n
The government’s plan promotes maternity leave and would expand public child-care centers. Firms would get financial incentives to hire more women. In addition, some groups are trying to break ages-old cultural norms about women single-handedly raising children by portraying men who play the role of child caregiver as caped heroes.<\/p>\n