Research On Role Conflict In The Non-regular Employment Of Married Women In Japan

This paper takes Japanese non-regular employed married women as the research object,and aims to investigate the role conflict of this group in family and workplace.After combing and refining the types of role conflicts of non-regular employed married women through previous research and official data,this paper analyzes the cultural and policy causes of role conflicts based on gender theory and modern family theory.According to the data of the Statistics Bureau of Japan in 2020,the proportion of regular employees and non-regular employees among Japanese women is roughly 1:3,and the number of non-regular employment married women exceeds 60%.However,most previous studies focused on the role conflict between career and family faced by regular employed women.Even if a small number of studies focus on non-regular employment women,most of them focus on single women or women as a whole.Most of the research focus on the differences of welfare and economic level of workers in different employment forms.Therefore,this paper focuses on whether there is role conflict in the non-regular employment of married women in Japan.By combing previous studies,this paper first found that the working hours of married women in non-regular employment are close to the lowest average level of regular employment.And the working hours in the family are long,but this dual burden of work and family is either ignored or undervalued.Secondly,housework has the characteristics of refinement and concealment.Therefore,the consumption of energy and physical strength caused by repeated housework is often easy to be ignored.Third,it is found that there is still a conflict between personal "will to pursue career development" and "good wife and mother",which is the social expectation of women’s fixed role.The role conflict of non-regular employed married women also has the characteristics of "focusing on family and supplemented by work".Finally,this paper analyzes the two reasons for the role conflict of non-regular employment of married women.First,Japan’s tax policy reform lags behind,still taking the family as the main body of care labor,and taking women as the main care provider.In order to supplement the labor shortage caused by the decreasing birthrate and aging of the population,Japan’s economic policy encourages married women to actively participate in social work.It is the above two contradictory policies that shape the role of married women "focusing on family and supplemented by work".Secondly,the gender consciousness of "good wife and good mother" in Japan still has a strong influence.As a result,in order to avoid individual risks,married women still regard the family as the rear and the family role as their main social role.