Multidimensional Structure of Occupational Segregation in Japan and the United States: Comparison of Trends from 1980 to 2010

In this chapter, we focus on Japan and the U.S. as countries where industrialization has progressed and clarify the trend of occupational segregation from 1980 to 2010. This chapter focuses on the varying strengths of the effects of gender and education on occupational segregation and compares occupational segregation in these two countries. With these transformations in the level of education and labor force participation rates of women in the U.S. and Japan between 1980 and 2010 in mind, let us consider the changing impact of education and gender on occupational segregation. The variation in occupational segregation caused by higher education can be considered in two ways. The first is the industrialization theory, which argues that as industrialization progresses, the importance of educational background in achieving professional status increases. Occupational segregation by gender can be caused by various factors, but one possible explanation is from the perspective of the welfare regime. The results of the analysis showed that occupational segregation in the U.S. and Japan in 1980 mainly consists of gender and education, and furthermore, it is common that the first and second dimensions cannot be clearly interpreted due to the influence of either gender or education. However, it has changed completely between 1980 and 2010. In the U.S., from 1980 to 2010, the first dimension of the space analyzed by correspondence analysis changed to education, and the second dimension changed to gender. In contrast, in Japan, from 1980 to 2010, the first dimension of occupational segregation shifted to gender and the second dimension to education. This may be due to the fact that Japan has a tax and social security system that discourages married women from entering the workforce, and women are subject to certain restrictions in their choice of occupation before they can re-enter the labor market, many of them become part-time workers.