Abstract
After the enforcement of the Equal Employment Opportunity Law, women workers have the legal rights of opportunities for career choice and promotion in a company.
Women workers face a new pattern of multi-linear personnel management. In this personnel management, the career development path is constructed by the job families. Freshmen and freshwomen are asked to select one of the job families. The job families are divided into two or three or four according to cases ; they are Ippan-shoku (regular workers), S g -shoku (executives), Senmon-shoku (specialists and technicians), and Foriegn workers. A freshwoman is assigned to the executive course or regular workers' course by her decision making and her aptitude. Workers can change to a different line of job families in their career paths.
The main differences of both the executive course line and the regular course line exist in the jobs, the promotion levels, the pay system, the presence of periodic transfers, and the merit-rating factors. Each weight of merit-rating factor is that an executive is estimated by performance > ability > emotion and exertion, and that a regular worker is estimated by emotion and exertion > ability > performance, where > means “being given heavier weights.” This way of weights on merit-rating factors means that the regular workers' jobs are the assistant or typical pattern jobs. Many women workers are the regular workers.
These divided courses reflect the modification of personnel management from the ranking system by seniority to the ability management in recent Japan. The ability management system and the multi-linear management system is accepted in many companies for further advancement. There is, however, imperfection and inmaturity of the equal employment opportunity for women workers.
A constant negotiation for equal opportunity in organization is necessary between the workers' union and the company. Changes of social consciousness are necessary to recognize various career development paths and a career choice by worker's self-decision making.
