From Home to Corner Office: How work-life programs influence women’s managerial representation in Japan
Gender expectations and their impact on work-life conflict have led to an underrepresentation of women in management positions. This problem is particularly apparent in countries where gender norms hold women primarily responsible for housework and childcare while idealizing an image of the “ideal worker” as male, free from family responsibilities, and willing to work long hours and attend meetings on demand.
Improving the gender balance in management positions would benefit women workers, the companies that employ them, and society as a whole. Methods like quotas and targeted recruitment, which require decision-makers to consider gender when choosing candidates to hire or promote, can lead to greater gender balance. However, because such actions are often contentious, companies may prefer instead to start programs that are open to all employees but particularly beneficial to women. Initiatives that help workers balance their professional and personal lives (i.e., work-life programs or WLP) fall within this category.
There are two types of WLP: (1) changes to how work is done, like flexible or remote work arrangements, which give employees more control over their work; and (2) support services, like childcare and paid leave, which help with personal life. Guoliang Frank Jiang, an Associate Professor of International Business at Carleton’s Sprott School of Business, says both types of WLP can bring more women into management, but they work differently: adding new resources tends to show results quickly, whereas changes to job structure or work culture take longer to have an impact.
Frank’s research in this area looked at a sample of large Japanese firms from 2006 to 2019. Along with his two co-authors, Frank combined such information as the number of women managers with demographic and accounting data to determine if WLPs help women move into management roles and how long it takes for them to do so.
The researchers first looked at when companies started using WLP practices like flexible hours, shorter workdays, remote work, half-day paid leaves, and daycare facilities or allowances. Then, they checked how many women were in managerial positions at different subsequent times in these companies. To make sure any changes in the number of women managers were because of the WLPs, they considered other factors that could affect career advancement, like overtime, years of service, and employee turnover.
The results show that WLPs help women’s career advancement in companies where the proportion of female employees is rising. They also indicate that adding resources like daycare increases the number of women managers more quickly than introducing WLP practices that require significant changes to how and where work is done (e.g., flexible work schedule). In fact, childcare support offers an almost immediate benefit for increasing the representation of women in leadership.
This research was co-authored by Yang Yang, Associate Professor and Assistant Chair of the William G. Rohrer College of Business, and Allison M. Konrad, Professor of Organizational Behaviour at the Ivey School of Business. It was published in The Journal of Management.
