Female and Senior Labor in East Asia

My presentation can be briefly described as a comparative sociological study of labor patterns among women and the elderly in East Asian societies.

Women typically leave work when they have a baby and rejoin the labor market some time later in Japan. Still today, quite a few people in Japanese society think that this so-called M-shape is “normal.” And Korean societies are even more conservative, in terms of gender division of labor.

Meanwhile, labor power provided by the elderly is extremely low in Taiwan, unlike in Japan, a “strange” society in that not a few old people consider that staying active in the labor market is good for health. This time I would like to put more emphasis on these differences of senior labor patterns, and discuss the reasons or cultural background of the phenomena.