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This paper looks at how far women's access to positions of power in the labor market is independent of class background, looking at the case of Japanese women in professional and managerial employment. It questions both the conventional approach to the class analysis of women, as well as the dismissal of the concept of class in understanding women and power. Using three different indicators of social origin, based on father's employment position, mother's work status and employment position, and parent's cultural capital, it argues that women's access to positions of power in employment is not independent of social origin. On the contrary, a privileged class background is more important for women that it is for men in gaining entry into professional and managerial employment. The study also looks at how the inclusion of women in the analysis affects the understanding of class, and proposes the use of both conventional and alternative theoretical and methodological approaches to understand the complex relationships between gender, class, and power.

The article discusses representation of women in positions of public power. Women are heavily under-represented in positions of public power. In most industrialized countries women are no longer confined to the family and excluded from the public sphere, but the radical changes in gender relations that have taken place over the second half of twentieth century have had limited effects in changing the gender balance of public power or increasing women's participation in decision-making positions. Several explanations have been put forward to understand women's segregation into low value, powerless positions in public life. The most influential explanations have attempted to understand women's exclusion or nationalization from power within the context of the intersection of important structural divisions in society such as class, gender and race. In the last decade of twentieth century, women have made significant encroachments into areas of public influence, in which even 20 years ago women were considered exceptional, if not abnormal.