Women\u27s Status and Roles in Contemporary Japanese Society

The combination of modernization and industrialization and the persistence of traditional attitudes serves to create a unique set of tensions and strains within the Japanese social system. The position of women is one such area in which the conflicting demands of this system are especially evident. Women in contemporary Japanese society are still expected to be good wives and mothers yet they are also often required to participate in the workforce in an economy beset by spiraling inflation. Even those women who are not forced to work by necessity have found that the importance of their wife/mother role has been significantly reduced by demographic and technological changes. The tension affecting women\u27s status and roles within contemporary Japanese society is the focus of this paper. I will use Wilbert Moore\u27s theory of social change, concentrating on the concomitants and consequences of industrialization and modernization to analyze the processes and effects of social change on women\u27s roles and status, and to construct a hypothesis concerning the future roles of women