This paper focuses on past instances of childcare leave takers in the workplace and re-examines the effectiveness of the childcare leave system as a means to decreasing the rate of women leaving their jobs due to pregnancy, verifying the issues necessary in providing effective support for women to continue work.

Various researches have pointed out that the childcare leave system in the workplace has a positive effect on women’s job continuity. Although the rate of women using the childcare leave system has increased since the Childcare Leave Act was enforced in 1992, women’s job continuity during their first pregnancy has not increased. Prior researches have claimed that factors other than childcare leave, such as decreasing childcare support from parents, as reasons for this. However, there is a possibility that overemphasis of childcare leave might have had a negative effect.

Ever since its legislation, the government has promoted the use of childcare leave, placing the system as the pillar for providing support for women’s job continuity. Although it has become a popular system, ways in maintaining job continuity might be getting too rigid, with women having become overly inclined to taking childcare leave. Primarily, childcare leave is an additional system which provides support in order to avoid situations where returning to work would be difficult after giving birth. However, there is a possibility that a perception that childcare leave is indispensable for job continuity, might be expanding among workers, due to over-consciousness of the system. Such women who are unable to take childcare leave might be quitting jobs without considering other ways of returning to work, other than taking childcare leave. This tendency is higher among full-time workers who have a good understanding of childcare leave. In a workplace where others have taken childcare leave, women tend to have a strong consciousness of the system, thinking “If she took it, then I want to as well.” Even so, in a situation where it is difficult to take childcare leave, women might quit their jobs without thinking about the option of returning to work after taking only maternity leave. In order to verify this hypothesis, profile data of women (between the ages of 30-44 years old) who were full-time workers at the time of their first pregnancy were analyzed.

The results show that (1) women in workplaces with precedent childcare leave takers are likely to take childcare leave but they are likely to quit work if they do not take childcare leave; (2) notification of the work-life balance (WLB) support system from workplaces to female employees increases the rate of childcare leave usage; (3) maternity leave has a positive effect on job continuity for women who do not take childcare leave; (4) the childcare leave system has no significant effect on reducing the number of women quitting jobs due to pregnancy, when the effects of the maternity leave system and notification of the WLB system are controlled.

In summary, childcare leave has both positive and negative effects on women’s job continuity. Emphasizing the use of childcare leave is ineffective in a workplace where it is difficult to take it. It is therefore important that companies notify their employees of the WLB system and further promote the use of childcare leave, as well as to support women without childcare leave, in returning to their jobs. It must not be forgotten that the childcare leave is an additional support system for women who find it difficult to return to jobs after maternity leave.

Since Ference, Stoner, and Warren (1977) describe a career plateau as“ the point in a career where the likelihood of additional hierarchical promotion is very low”(p.602), traditional studies of career plateau primarily investigate this phenomenon based on the assumption that upward mobility is good. However, this situation has been changing and some studies focus on new career plateaus under flatter hierarchies (Sakurada, 2005).

This study focuses on Schein’s career model (1978) and Feldman and Weitz(1988a, b)’s career plateau concept. And it also examines how flatter organizational hierarchies influence career plateaus and what factors work as additional incentives instead of the promotion incentive in “flattened” companies.

Therefore this study set two questions to make clear the new career plateaus in flattened companies. First, do flatter organizational hierarchies make more managers career plateaued? Second, what factors do work as additional incentives instead of the promotion incentive?

Our data from Japanese companies shows that flatter organizational hierarchies make more managers promotional career plateaued but do not influence a career plateau in radial movements. It also shows that delegation of authority in flattened companies can avoid a career plateau in radial movements.