Remaining Gender Inequality in New Graduate Hiring

Wataru Yoshida

National Institute of Population and Social Security Research

2025-07-04

Introduction

On myself

• Wataru Yoshida
  • Born in 1993, in Yamaguchi Pref.
  • For my research, please see this page.
  • My personal website

• Working at the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (IPSS)
  • Population projection and analyses on marriage and fertility

On my research

• Studying new graduate hiring by Japanese firms
  • From sociological perspective
  • Focusing on (gender) inequality
  • Using firm-level panel data

• “A Sociological Analysis of Inequality in New Graduate Hiring”
  • Based on my dissertation

Overview of gender inequality in Japan

Summary

Q. How would you summarize the current state of gender inequality in hiring new graduates in Japanese society?

Summary

Q. How would you summarize the current state of gender inequality in hiring new graduates in Japanese society?

My answer:

It is improving, but not enough.

Summary

Q. How would you summarize the current state of gender inequality in hiring new graduates in Japanese society?

My answer:

It is improving, but not enough.

Improvement: College enrollment rates

• Increase in college enrollment rates among women since the 1990s
  • Narrowing the gender gap

Improvement: Legislative change

• The amendment of the Act on Equal Opportunity and Treatment between Men and Women in Employment
  • Banned gender discrimination in recruitment and employment (Article 5, in 1997)
    • No more gendered track system (men for key roles, women for supporting roles)
  • Banned indirect gender discrimination (Article 7, in 2006)
    • No more height and weight requirements when not necessary

• Act on the Promotion of Women’s Active Engagement in Professional Life (2015)
  • Understanding and setting targets for female proportion of new hires

Summary

Q. How would you summarize the current state of gender inequality in hiring new graduates in Japanese society?

My answer:

It is improving, but not enough.

Not enough: Gender wage gap

Not enough: Overall trends

CSR Data by Toyo Keizai Inc.

Not enough: Trends by industry

CSR Data by Toyo Keizai Inc.

Not enough: Trends by industry (cont.)

CSR Data by Toyo Keizai Inc.

Why has the progress been so slow?

‘One-demensional’ model

• We can evaluate the gender inequality in each firm via a single criterion.
• There are good firms and bad firms.
  • Good: Actively engaged in eliminating gender discrimination, providing many opportunities for women to advance their career, offering a healthy work-life balance, …
  • Bad: Gender discrimination is prevalent, male-oriented culture, flexible polices are barely accessible, …

Questioning ‘one-demensional’ model

• Is that true?
  • Are good firms always doing good things?

• Testing trickle-down hypotheses
  1. Women mangers ￪ ⇒ women new hires ￪ ? (吉田 2022, Paper #1)
  2. Generous WFPs ￪ ⇒ women new hires ￪ ? (吉田 2020, Paper #2)

Paper #1: Change agents or cogs in the machine?

• Do women managers improve gender inequality in firms? (Cohen and Huffman 2007)
  • Change agents hypothesis answers Yes.

• Homophily and homosocial reproduction (Kanter 1977)
  • Mitigating the in-group preference by men managers (Castilla 2011; Elliott and Smith 2004)
• Motivated to reduce gender inequality
  • Based on their own experiences and observations (Dobbin and Kalev 2019)
  • More supportive of workplace diversity policies (Scarborough, Lambouths III, and Holbrook 2019)

Paper #1: Change agents or cogs in the machine?

• Do women managers improve gender inequality in firms?
  • Cogs in the machine hypothesis answers No.

• Lack of power
  • Vertical gender segregation (Blair-Loy and Wharton 2002; Cohen, Huffman, and Knauer 2009; Jacobs 1992)
  • Not exceeding the critical mass (Konrad, Kramer, and Erkut 2008)
• Lack of motivation
  • Distancing themselves from “gender issues” by adopting “masculine” behavior (Cooper 1997; Kanter 1977)

Paper #1: RQ

• Do women managers promote the hiring of women?

• On the causal effects within a firm
  • “After the number of women managers in a given company increases, does the number of female hires at that company also increase?”

Paper #1: Data and variables

• CSR Data by Toyo Keizai Inc.
  • Panel data for large listed firms in Japan
  • N = 5,000 (1,046 firms)

• Outcome: % of women in new hires / gender gap in the retention rates (3 years)
• Treatment: % of women in upper/lower management

Paper #1: Results on hiring

Low-level managers

• Not significant

High-level managers

• Not significant

Paper #1: Results on retention

Low-level managers

• Negative effect

High-level managers

• Positive effect

Paper #1: Conclusion

• Do women managers promote the hiring of women?

• No.
  • Each line manager has too limited rights on hiring.

• Even negative effects on women’s retention
  • Too demanding to female subordinates?
  • Queen bee syndrome (Cooper 1997; Derks et al. 2011)

Paper #2: Work-family policies (WFPs)

• WFPs to support the balancing of work and family life
  • To facilitate women to continue their employment after marriage and childbirth

Paper #2: Welfare state paradox

• Welfare State Paradox (Mandel and Semyonov 2006)
  • Generous WFPs hinder women’s career achievement?
  • Does not apply to Japan (Mun and Brinton 2017; Mun and Jung 2018)
    • But what about during the economic downturn?

Paper #2: RQ

1. Do companies with more generous WFPs hire more women?
2. Are the relationship between WFPs and women’s hiring affected by the company’s business conditions?

• Analyzing the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath

Paper #2: Data and variables

• Shushoku Shikiho
  • Panel data for large firms in Japan
  • N = 1,690 (547 firms) from 2008 to 2011

• Outcome: % of women in new hires
• Treatment: Generosity of WFPs (Length of paid maternity/parental leave)

Paper #2: Results on RQ1

• Not significant
  • No difference between the generosity of WFPs

Paper #2: Results on RQ2

Paper #2: Conclusion

1. Do companies with more generous WFPs hire more women? - No.
2. Are the relationship between WFPs and women’s hiring affected by the company’s business conditions? - Yes, but in a somewhat ironic way

Possible statistical discrimination (Phelps 1972)

1. Many Japanese companies view the use of WFPs as an increase in labor costs. (Brinton and Mun 2016)
2. They also believe most WFP users are women. (Brinton and Oh 2019; Goldstein-Gidoni 2019)
3. Firms w/ generous WFPs would like to reduce their labor costs during the economic downturn.
4. They do so by not hiring many women, as potential users of WFPs.

For the panel talk and discussion

Denying ‘One-demensional’ model

• My papers deny the ‘one-dimensional’ model.
  • Good firms are not always doing good things.
  • No trickle-down effects

• This could explain the slow progress in improving gender inequality in hiring.
  • Suggesting the need for equalizing measures specific to hiring
    • No one-size-fits-all solutions.
    • Then what solutions? - I hope we can discuss :)

Literature

Blair-Loy, M., and A. S. Wharton. 2002. “Employees’ Use of Work-Family Policies and the Workplace Social Context.” Social Forces 80 (3): 813–45. https://doi.org/10.1353/sof.2002.0002.

Brinton, Mary C., and Eunmi Mun. 2016. “Between State and Family: Managers’ Implementation and Evaluation of Parental Leave Policies in Japan.” Socio-Economic Review 14 (2): 257–81. https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwv021.

Brinton, Mary C., and Eunsil Oh. 2019. “Babies, Work, or Both? Highly Educated Women’s Employment and Fertility in East Asia.” American Journal of Sociology 125 (1): 105–40. https://doi.org/10.1086/704369.

Castilla, Emilio J. 2011. “Bringing Managers Back In: Managerial Influences on Workplace Inequality.” American Sociological Review 76 (5): 667–94. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122411420814.

Cohen, Philip N., and Matt L. Huffman. 2007. “Working for the Woman? Female Managers and the Gender Wage Gap.” American Sociological Review 72 (5): 681–704. https://doi.org/10.1177/000312240707200502.

Cohen, Philip N., Matt L. Huffman, and Stefanie Knauer. 2009. “Stalled Progress?: Gender Segregation and Wage Inequality Among Managers, 1980-2000.” Work and Occupations 36 (4): 318–42. https://doi.org/10.1177/0730888409347582.

Cooper, Virginia W. 1997. “Homophily or the Queen Bee Syndrome: Female Evaluation of Female Leadership.” Small Group Research 28 (4): 483–99. https://doi.org/10.1177/1046496497284001.

Derks, Belle, Naomi Ellemers, Colette van Laar, and Kim de Groot. 2011. “Do Sexist Organizational Cultures Create the Queen Bee?” British Journal of Social Psychology 50 (3): 519–35. https://doi.org/10.1348/014466610X525280.

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Goldstein-Gidoni, Ofra. 2019. “The Japanese Corporate Family: The Marital Gender Contract Facing New Challenges.” Journal of Family Issues 40 (7): 835–64. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X19830147.

Jacobs, Jerry A. 1992. “Women’s Entry Into Management: Trends in Earnings, Authority, and Values Among Salaried Managers.” Administrative Science Quarterly 37 (2): 282–301. https://doi.org/10.2307/2393225.

Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. 1977. Men and Women of the Corporation. New York: Basic Books.

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Mun, Eunmi, and Jiwook Jung. 2018. “Policy Generosity, Employer Heterogeneity, and Women’s Employment Opportunities: The Welfare State Paradox Reexamined.” American Sociological Review 83 (3): 508–35. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122418772857.

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吉田航. 2020. “新卒採用のジェンダー不平等をもたらす企業の組織的要因企業の経営状況との関連に着目して.” 社会学評論 71 (2): 314–30. https://doi.org/10.4057/jsr.71.314.

———. 2022. “女性管理職は「変化の担い手」か「機械の歯車」か？ 新卒女性の採用・定着に与える影響に着目して.” 理論と方法 37 (1): 18–33. https://doi.org/10.11218/ojjams.37.18.