Gender, class and power in Japan: does social origin affect women's access to power in employment?

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.