This proposal is the first commonsensical thing I've heard from the Japanese government since they started wringing their hands about the falling population.

There won't be nearly as big a crisis in the coming years if they arrange things so that half of the population (women) has an incentive to work. This will increase the labor supply, improve the wealth of the country and slow the impending economic slowdown.

With women able to put their children in day care they will also have a slight incentive to have more than one and/or to get married earlier.

The government is panicked about the declining population. To me this seems like a golden opportunity for a modern industrialized society to transition to a sustainable model. I'd like to propose that those here interested in sustainable economies post ideas (including fanciful ones) that could help with the transition.

The first question that needs to be answered is it the decline in population that is worrying the Japanese or the ageing of the population? If it is the decline in size then that is not really a problem, there is no external reason why a population has to be of a certain size. There have been many times in history where populations have fallen and the society survived.

If they are worried about the ageing population then they need ideas on what constitutes a person's working period, as well as what role the elderly can play in society.

Ideas?

Policies not Politics
---- Daily Landscape

Great article...a topic who's time should have come long ago...in many places...

"Once in awhile we get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if we look at it right" - Hunter/Garcia

I thought this news, especially coming from Japan...about a push for gender equity was huge...surprised it didn't get much comment...

"Once in awhile we get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if we look at it right" - Hunter/Garcia

All good measures to be sure, but having a fair amount of contact with young Japanese people, I'm not too sure how much positive incentives will help.

I teach junior high English in a semi-rural area not too far from Tokyo.  One of the exercises we do at some point in the second year is to ask students what job they want when they grow up.  Now, as is to be expected, not many kids have a really firm idea what they want to do.  What kind of surprised me, though, was how many of the girls, after going through their little skit, emphatically denied that they REALLY wanted to do whatever it was they claimed - because what they really wanted to do was be a housewife, which wasn't on the sample list of jobs provided to them.

So, let's generalize from this anecdote.  Say you have a generation of girls who grow up and want nothing more to be housewives.  Not all of them, of course, but quite a few.  Such traditional aspirations are hardly discouraged, especially in the countryside.  So, knowing that they're not going to have to build a career, they don't really pay much attention in school, just enough to get by.  So, not being qualified to do much of anything when they graduate, they work at a crappy dead end job, which more likely than not, they don't enjoy all that much.  Then they get married, and have a kid or two.  Now, at this point, sure, they could go back to the same sort of crappy dead end job they were working before, except now they are older and it's even less fun than when it was just something to do to pass the time.  But, unless they really need the money, why should they?  Especially if they're still in their hometown, (the Japanese don't seem to move nearly as much as Americans - many of my co-workers went to the same school at which they are now teaching), and have a whole support network of family and friends, and thus not particularly isolated or lonely (the sterotype  for stay-at-home housewives in the states, who if you believe the stories, go for days at a time hardly talking to another adult.)

I was under the impression that in the US, the widespread move of women into the workplace largely coincided with the onset of real wage stagnation and the decline of American manufacturing.  It was sort of forced upon us by necessity, and presented by feminism as a boon (as it surely was to many.)  I wonder how successful a similar push in Japan will be without a similar disciplining of the workforce, given how much stronger traditional gender values are, and how much weaker the allure of careers seem to be to young women.

Then again, this is all anecdotal, and I may be completely off.  Let me know what you think.

The best way to get woman to work and to get them to keep working after having babies is good/affordable childcare. Without affordable & good childcare (lots of) mothers will stay at home to take care of the kids for at least a couple of years (i'm not judging, but this is not good for the position of the mother as she (re-)enters the jobmarket. [This is the case in the Netherlands]

Plus woman often want to work part-time, which isn't great for their bargaining position and are not as good in getting raises as men. But this might me completely due to the abovementioned point.