Gender Inequality within the Segmentation of the Japanese Labor Market?

This article is an attempt to analyze the changing male-female inequalities in Japan since the beginning of the current crisis. First, the male-female wage differential is put into a historical perspective, from the 1950s. Then, we review two kinds of interpretations – positive and negative – of the evolution since the beginning of the 1990s. We try to overcome this opposition by taking into account the global evolution of the labour market and of the inequalities, that is, the rising unemployment rate and a “resegmentation” of the labor market, with new cleavages. Finally, we propose a new concept for the male-female inequalities by integrating the notion of gender in the analysis of the wage labour nexus. It is helpful to understand the limits of the contemporary evolution and to make clear the issues at stake concerning the male-female equality policy.