Local Government’s Outsourcing of Administrative Services and Emerging Entrepreneurship by Housewives: A case study of Minami-Osawa district in Tama New Town, Tokyo.

Abstract

This paper highlights emerging women’s entrepreneurship as a new agency in restructuring a suburban community in Tokyo. It will also examine how housewives have cultivated their opportunities in business and expanded the potential of their lives. During the 1960s, an era of high economic growth, new residential estates were widely developed throughout the major suburbs in Japan. The urban spatial structure in Tokyo has incorporated a clear gender role division, where men engage in wage employment at the city center while women engage in housework and child care in the suburbs. The Japanese type of social and spatial division of labor has been supported by the unpaid housework of women.

Presently as globalizing capitalism advances and workforces are restructured in Japan, the modern nuclear family model of men as “breadwinners” supported by housewives has been disrupted. Also, under pressure to cut municipal expenses, municipalities are commissioning and encouraging residents’ groups to supply public services. New types of organizations like non-profit organizations (NPOs) have emerged, and some actively engage in “partnership systems” doing outsourced work for the municipality. The number of such organizations participating in this system has increased every year and also the types of partnerships entrusted by Hachioji City to these groups have diversified. Partnership activities include planning and managing community events such as summer festivals, the maintenance of green tracts of land, delivering meals to elderly persons living alone, and support for working mothers. Many users have come to rely on the services of community-based NPOs.

It is noteworthy that in this sort of outsourcing, new forms of entrepreneurship are being promoted by women who are utilizing their experience as housewives, such as housework and childcare, and their intimate network with their neighbors in the local community. The author focuses on one of these organization called S that was established by housewives, and analyzed their work through participatory observation. These women are utilizing their experience and knowledge in business, which they have cultivated in their community. Services and programs designed through the imagination and original ideas of housewives surpass even the common conceptual frame of public service. They offer: 1) consultation services with regard to local residents’ everyday needs, 2) intermediate businesses run for the local neighborhood and the municipality, such as supporting community festivals, and 3) facilitation of social relations for newly opened condominiums’ residents by disseminating information on the new neighborhood or holding parties for promoting mutual friendship, which S calls “community support”. Although the first two types of business do not provide much benefit to S, they have provided S with a favorable reputation that bolsters its potential. As municipalities or other companies outsource more work, there will be greater business opportunities for such small community businesses. Their partnership has raised their skill levels and inspired more trust in the local network, thus ultimately bolstering their popularity in the area.

In spite of having careers that required a high level of education, the women of S’s staff left their previous jobs at the time of their marriage or childbearing. However, they retained a strong desire to return to work, and looked for suitable jobs until they finally found a position in S. S’s women have in common expectations to contribute not only to their household income but also to their community. It is a great step forward for them to engage in paid jobs with a public purpose. These engagements empower them to alter their family gender roles and to promote a sense of self-confidence.

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