As international trade barriers fall to NAFTAs and GATTs, it becomes necessary to examine closely the lifestyles of those countries who promise to become the United States' close business partners. Japan and Mexico top that list. There are many attributes of the Japanese and Mexican lifestyle compatible with American standards, but in one key area these two countries differ greatly from ours: the status of women in society and in the workplace. An examination of the lifestyles of Mexican and Japanese women will reveal a status quo much lower than that enjoyed by women in the United States.
The root cause for this discrepancy lies in the basic social structure of both countries. Although derived from different causes, Mexico and Japan are rigidly hierarchic in social and organizational orientation. Moreover, their hierarchies have taken on a particularly patriarchal coloring. Both countries pride themselves on maintaining a certain purity of "tradition," traditions (religious and social) that emphasize the compartmentalization of women into a lower strata of opportunity than men.
In Japan the elements of hierarchy are well-known: theirs was an elaborately-nuanced class system that did not "demote" the emperor from deity status until 1945. Although empresses ruled early in Japanese history, foreign-born Confucian ideals came to override matriarchal-oriented indigenous beliefs:
Confucian philosophy and (a) long feudal experience combined to restrict the freedom of women and force them into complete subordination to men. Women (in that war-torn) age of swordsmanship were... less capable of fighting (and) pushed out of the feudal structure. Confucianism... the product of a patriarchal and strongly male-dominated society in China, saw women as important for bearing children and perpetuating the family more than as helpmates or objects of love.
In Mexico the hierarchial nature of society stems from the colonial ...