Organizational Influences on Women's Managerial Advancement in Local Government

• In Event: Public Administration in a Local Government Context

Abstract

Why are there so few female managers in Japan's local government authorities? In Japan, there is a pressing need to promote women into leadership positions within local government authorities to advance diversity in the workplace. While Japan is often recognized as a country where women encounter obstacles in advancing their careers, it has initiated various policies to encourage female participation in the public sector. Additionally, the Japanese public sector offers support systems to facilitate work-life balance, surpassing what is typically available in the private sector. However, despite these initiatives and advantages, the number of female managers in the public sector remains conspicuously low, necessitating a deeper investigation into the underlying factors.
Previous research, primarily focused on the private sector within labor economics and sociology, has identified individual and human resource management-related factors contributing to this gender disparity (e.g., Osawa eds.2019). However, these factors do not uniformly apply to female public servants in Japan, who often demonstrate a strong commitment to long-term employment. Recent research has also explored issues related to human resource management systems, such as discrimination based on personal preferences, statistical biases, benevolent forms of sexism, and self-fulfilling prophecies. Moreover, these investigations have examined workplace culture and atmosphere. Nevertheless, such inquiries have been relatively limited within Japan's administrative organizations. Furthermore, discussions focusing on the representative bureaucracy (Mosher 1968, Riccucci 2002) in the field of public administration have not delved into the reasons for the persisting gender disparity in leadership roles.
To address these gaps in understanding, this study focuses on two unique organizational factors specific to Japan's administrative context. These factors are the recognition of entrenched “Open office layout system” practices and the concept of “job embeddedness” (Mitchell et al.2001). The study hypothesizes that these organizational elements significantly influence the career awareness of female managers in local government authorities.
To empirically test these hypotheses, our research group conducted an extensive survey, the first of its kind, involving both male and female municipal employees in Japan. This comprehensive survey covered four local government authorities and included three distinct groups: newly recruited employees in 2021, those hired in 2022, and managerial staff from 2022. Rigorous regression analyses were performed on the collected data, ultimately providing support for the proposed hypotheses.
This research makes three contribution significantly to our understanding of adaptive governance in the face of rapid environmental change. Firstly, it underscores the importance of recognizing the role played by organizational factors when striving for diversity within public institutions and implementing necessary reforms. Secondly, it highlights the need to consider the distinct characteristics of each country's administrative systems when examining the factors hindering the achievement of gender parity in bureaucratic hierarchies. Lastly, it emphasizes the significance of adopting evidence-based management practices grounded in meticulously collected survey data when advancing transformative reforms in the domain of human resource management within the public sector.

Author

• Reiko Arami, Nagoya University