Gender Gap in Career Path of Local Government Executives

: A Case of a Japanese City A

Abstract

This study analyzed career paths of general clerical executives who had served for designated city A at director-general level or relevant level from the perspective of specific job contents and gender comparison.

Though the examination of the female director-general level executives in the last 50 years regardless of job types, it was confirmed that there was no female director-general level executive whose job type was “general clerical “ in designated city A.

Thereafter, by conducting the interview survey for the 11 executives through semi-structured interviews, it was analyzed that the female executives were assigned to job descriptions that made it difficult for them to acquire enough “Decision making skills” in the first half of their careers, while male executives were assigned to appropriate positions in their career paths. It was confirmed that there was a clear gap between male and female executives at the initial stage of their careers.

In addition, it was also recognized that when the female executives suddenly got transferred to the posts that required them to make decisions of the local government 20 to 25 years after they started their careers at the city government, they managed to use human network mainly to compensate for their lack of experience.