Regarding women's employment, both men and women support the idea that "women should continue working even after having a child". In reality, however, the amount of time that men during their child rearing periods spend on housework is extremely small, and with insufficient social support it is not easy for women to actually continue working. In addition, looking at the employment pattern of women who return to the workplace, most are employed non-regular, and in many cases they have accepted such positions even though they would have preferred regular employment.

Promotion of flexible and shorter work hours in corporations during child rearing periods and of equal treatment of regular and non-regular employees are important in order to encourage the employment of women who want to work. In addition, through support for balancing work and home and the creation of diverse choices, it is important to reexamine the ways people, including men, work today and to seek to harmonize work and private life.

## (International Comparison of Female Labour Force Participation Rates)

Comparing the participation of women in the labour force in different countries, at 59.5%, the USA had the highest rate of participation of the countries surveyed, followed by the Netherlands, the UK, Germany, and France. At 48.3%, Japan had the lowest rate except for Italy. Comparing participation rates by age groups, the graphs for Japan and South Korea form m-shaped curves, while those of Europe and the USA are generally trapezoidal. Female participation in the labour force in Japan is particularly low compared to the USA and Europe in the 30–34 age group, when many women are facing marriage and childbirth (Figure 45).

## (Issues in Women's Employment)

Regarding women's employment, 41.9% of those surveyed answered "Women should continue employment even after having a child", followed by 37.0% who said "Women should leave employment when they have a child and return when the child is older", 9.1% who responded "Women should remain employed until they have a child", 5.4% who replied "Women should remain employed until they get married", and 1.7% who answered "Women should not be employed". The response "Women should continue employment even after having a child" is on an upward trend for both women and men, indicating an increasing sentiment in favor of women continuing employment after having a child (Figure 46).

Looking at the desires of women with children towards work, there are three patterns. There are women who wish to continue working (the "continued employment pattern"), women who wish to take the opportunity of marriage and childbirth to stop working and then return to the workplace when the burden of childrearing has eased (the "reemployment pattern"), and women who wish to be regular homemakers concentrating on housework and childrearing. Below, this paper considers issues related to the continuing employment pattern and the reemployment pattern.

## (Issues with the Continuing Employment Pattern)

According to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's "2nd Longitudinal Survey of Adults in 21st Century", the employment status of women who responded "Have a job" in the first survey and then gave birth within one year was 62.1% "Continuing in same employment" and 28.3% "Left employment". Looking at regular and non-regular employment, of those "Continuing in same employment", regular was much higher at 69.1% versus 38.8% for non-regular (Figure 47). In addition, looking back on desire to continue working expressed one year earlier and employment status, of those who said "Will continue working after giving birth", 78.9% were still working, while 11.3% had left their jobs.