Yuko Ogasawara 
Office Ladies and Salaried Men 
Power, Gender, and Work in Japanese Companies

In large corporations in Japan, much of the clerical work is carried out by young women known as ‘office ladies’ (OLs) or ‘flowers of the workplace.’ Largely nameless, OLs serve tea to the men and type and file their reports. They are exempt from the traditional lifetime employment and have few opportunities for promotion. In this engaging ethnography, Yuko Ogasawara exposes the ways that these women resist men’s power, and why the men, despite their exclusive command of authority, often subject themselves to the women’s control. Ogasawara, a Japanese sociologist trained in the United States, skillfully mines perceptive participant-observation analyses and numerous interviews to outline the tensions and humiliations of OL work. She details the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that OLs who are frustrated by demeaning, dead-end jobs thwart their managers and subvert the power structure to their advantage. Using gossip, outright work refusal, and public gift-giving as manipulative strategies, they can ultimately make or break the careers of the men. This intimate and absorbing analysis illustrates how the relationships between women and work, and women and men, are far more complex than the previous literature has shown.


This title is part of UC Press’s Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1998.

In large corporations in Japan, much of the clerical work is carried out by young women known as ‘office ladies’ (OLs) or ‘flowers of the workplace.’ Largely nameless, OLs serve tea to the men and type and file their reports. They are exempt from the trad

Tabela de Conteúdo

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION


1.

The Japanese Labor Market and Office Ladies

2.

Why Office Ladies Do Not Organize

3.

Gossip

4.

Popularity Poll

5.

Acts of Resistance

6.

Men Curry Favor with Women


CONCLUSION

APPENDIX A: DATA AND METHODS

APPENDIX B: PROFILES OF SARARIMAN AND

OFFICE LADIES INTERVIEWED

APPENDIX C: PROFILES OF FIFTEEN OFFICE

LADIES AT TOZAI BANK

APPENDIX D: PROFILES OF INTERVIEWEES ON

VALENTINE’S DAY GIFT-GIVING

APPENDIX E: SUMMARY OF TELEPHONE

INTERVIEWS WITH SARARIMAN WIVES

REGARDING WHITE DAY


NOTES

GLOSSARY

REFERENCES

INDEX

Sobre o autor

Yuko Ogasawara is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Edogawa University.