Working with the Japanese at a senior level when you're a non-Japanese woman

COMMUNITY / How-tos

Working with the Japanese at a senior level when you’re a non-Japanese woman

The modern office: Japanese business practices have come a long way since the 1980s, when many books about working in the country were written. | GETTY IMAGES

By Rochelle Kopp
Contributing Writer

Dec 12, 2019

A question I’m asked quite often by non-Japanese women working in professional and managerial roles is, “Will Japanese salarymen treat me with respect?”

It’s not a surprising question, given the many stories they may have heard about the challenges faced by Japanese women in the workforce, and sexism is undeniably a problem here. However, it’s important to also acknowledge that the days of women serving tea have been largely relegated to the past. And as a female executive who has successfully worked with Japanese colleagues for her entire career, I’d hate for other women to deliberately avoid working in or with Japanese firms based on old stories they’ve heard.

For example, I consulted for an American company that was in the process of being acquired by a Japanese firm and was teaching a seminar on Japanese corporate culture to the executive team. During a break, one woman on the team approached me and told me that what I presented in the seminar had matched what she had found in her own research, but that I had left out one key point — she had read that Japanese men don’t like to work with women and, based on that, she was planning on skipping a key meeting with the new Japanese owners of her firm.