Gender and Diplomacy, Family Policies, and Top Women Diplomats

Research on women diplomats draws our attention to their experiences in MFAs around the world (e.g., Bashevkin Reference Bashevkin, Aggestam and Towns2018; Farias de Souza and do Carmo Reference de Souza Farias, Carmo, Aggestam and Towns2018; Flowers Reference Flowers, Aggestam and Towns2018; Linse Reference Linse and Slavik2004; Niklasson and Robertson Reference Niklasson, Robertson, Aggestam and Towns2018; Rumelili and Suleymanoglu-Kurum Reference Rumelili, Suleymanoglu-Kurum, Aggestam and Towns2018). Two recent studies, Fellegi et al. (Reference Fellegi, Kočí and Benešová2023) and Stephensen (2024), specifically address challenges that women diplomats in leadership roles face in balancing work and family responsibilities throughout their careers. Focusing on women diplomats in leadership offers a window onto continuity and change in these institutions over time. Fellegi et al. (Reference Fellegi, Kočí and Benešová2023) find that work-family balance is one of the key reasons why there are so few women in leadership in the Czech MFA. Their analysis focuses on structural constraints of formal institutional rules on work-family balance at three levels: individual, institutional, and state. Structural barriers at the state level in the form of legal and policy norms that codify gendered expectations of motherhood are the most difficult to overcome (Fellegi et al. Reference Fellegi, Kočí and Benešová2023, 234). These national family policies place significant constraints on women’s careers by establishing women as primary caregivers. As a result, women who do progress to leadership positions experience a significant lag in their career progression and are often 10 years older than men in similar positions (239).

Stephensen’s (2024) feminist institutionalist analysis of four Australian international affairs institutions including the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (the country’s MFA) demonstrates how formal and informal institutional rules significantly impact women diplomats’ career progression, especially as it relates to issues around work and family. Formal rules such as those prohibiting flex time and requiring long working hours negatively affected women’s careers. Although formal rules now officially establish merit as the basis for promotions and require transparency in career progression, Stephensen finds that informal institutional rules around the age at which certain career milestones should be met and when in their career women should have children were still in place (Stephensen 2024, 171). If women miss these milestones — because they were not aware they existed — they are viewed with suspicion and concerns about what deficiency prevented them from meeting the goal. These and other informal institutional rules are difficult to overcome.

This article builds on these studies including by offering a deeper understanding of the experiences of Japanese women diplomats in leadership, especially related to how women’s efforts to balance work and family, have changed over time; surfacing informal institutional rules with implications for balancing work and family at MOFA; and analyzing whether and how these informal institutional rules have changed with the implementation of family policies. Studying Japan’s MOFA responds to Aggestam and Towns’ (Reference Aggestam and Towns2019) call to expand the geographical and cultural field of the growing gender and diplomacy literature that analyzes MFAs as gendered institutions beyond Europe and North America. This close examination of Japan, which shares political and economic traits of the Western countries that comprise the empirical cases for most of these studies, allows us to observe how institutional norms hinder policies to advance women in the workplace. The longitudinal aspect of this research provides a view of a time when women at MOFA navigated an organization that lacked formal and informal institutional rules related to their work-life balance. Franschet (2017) and Piscopo (2017) advance our understanding of informality — the absence of formal and informal institutional rules — with analysis of how women leverage the absence of rules and norms to gain political power. Research on women in MOFA which one US diplomat described as more rank conscious than MFAs anywhere else they had served over a 20-year career (Author Interview, US diplomat Tokyo, Japan June 25, 2024), shows how too few women, a deeply hierarchical organization, and gender hierarchy within the organization prevented women from leveraging informality in the early days to shape family-related policies. In addition to the rigid hierarchical structure of the organization, this research also demonstrates that the informal institutional rules at MOFA, along with the extremely low numbers of women at the organization until the 1990s, precluded women from harnessing the potential of informality. Instead, the absence of rules governing how women balance family responsibilities gave way to an extension of informal institutional rules of total availability and presenteeism. Once family policies were introduced to regulate work-life balance, informal institutional rules shifted to become accommodating institutions, a novel type of institutional rules. These will be discussed below.

Though largely focused on corporations, the literature on gender and work in Japan provides useful insights. The Japanese state plays a significant role in policies that reinforce traditional gender roles. For example, tax policies and a limited social safety net shaped women’s participation in the paid labor market; while lifetime employment with no breaks in service and seniority pay and promotion has historically led women to concentrate in part-time work without career advancement (Brinton Reference Brinton1994; Schoppa Reference Schoppa2008). Moreover, government policies on overtime work coupled with company cultures that require long working hours and afterwork socializing; informal discriminatory corporate practices such as tracked hiring, where men are usually hired on the career track and women on the clerical/administrative track, further reinforce the gendered labor market as well as traditional gender roles (Ogasawara Reference Ogasawara1998). Recent research in this area highlights how public policies and corporate practices blur the public/private dichotomy. Efforts to increase women in the workforce contribute to this blurring with the emphasis on providing benefits that promise to ease the burden of women’s care responsibilities including paid parental leave, flex time, childcare subsidies, and the like (Hatano Reference Hatano2021; Lambert Reference Lambert2007; Steel 2019).

Formal Institutions, Informal Institutions, and Informality

Gendered institutions such as Japan’s MOFA and other MFAs are institutions where “gender is present in the processes, practices, images and ideologies, and distribution of power” (Acker Reference Acker1992; see also Kenny Reference Kenny2013). Feminist institutionalist approaches highlight the role of formal and informal institutional rules in continuity and change in gendered institutions (Chappell and Mackay Reference Chappell, Galea, Waylen and Waylen2017, 25–28; Kenny Reference Kenny2013; Waylen Reference Waylen2017).

Informal institutional rules are not written down but still carry great weight as they set the expectations for how things are done. Informal institutional rules are “socially shared rules, usually unwritten, that are created, communicated, and enforced outside of officially sanctioned channels” (Helmke and Levitsky Reference Helmke and Levitsky2004, 727). Some scholars do not make sharp distinctions between formal and informal institutional rules, but they agree that the relationship between these rules and norms are important (e.g., Lowndes Reference Lowndes2020; Ostrom Reference Ostrom and Sabatier1999) as they are the “prescription that define what actions (or outcomes) are required, prohibited or permitted, and the sanctions authorized if the rules are not followed” (Ostrom Reference Ostrom and Sabatier1999, 38). Following Helmke and Levitsky (Reference Helmke and Levitsky2004), Lowndes (Reference Lowndes2020) defines both formal and informal institutions as having three characteristics. They are: (1) “specific to a particular political or governmental setting, recognized by actors, if not always adhered to,” (2) “shape political behavior in a relatively predictable and stable manner,” and (3) “subject to some sort of third-party enforcement” (Lowndes Reference Lowndes2020, 548–49). Thus, despite not being codified, informal institutional rules clearly constrain behavior because there are sanctions imposed on those who do not abide by them. Informal institutional rules are very difficult to change (Helmke and Levitsky Reference Helmke and Levitsky2004, 731). They are particularly “sticky” and often work to “preserve gender status quo” (Chappel and Mackay Reference Chappell, Galea, Waylen and Waylen2017, 32; Franceschet and Piscopo Reference Franceschet and Piscopo2014). In other words, they enable powerful institutional actors to maintain influence, including the ability to punish through social sanctions on those who challenge the status quo.

Informal institutional rules (norms or practices) can be competitive, complementary, accommodating, or substitutive. Their categorization depends on whether the outcomes of formal and informal institutions diverge or converge and whether formal institutions are effective or ineffective. The two most straightforward types of informal institutions — complementary and competing — have received the most scholarly attention (Helmke and Levitsky Reference Helmke and Levitsky2004, 728). The outcomes of complementary informal institutions converge with those of effective formal institutions so that the former strengthens or enhances the latter. By contrast, competing informal institutions produce outcomes that diverge from the outcomes of formal institutions; and because the latter are ineffective in this case, informal institutions pose significant challenges. Accommodating and substitutive informal institutions are less well-studied. Substitutive informal institutions have outcomes that converge with those of formal institutions that are ineffective. So, despite the formal institutions being ineffective, the outcomes are compatible with those we would expect from the formal institution; achieving what the formal institution could not. Accommodating informal institutions, the kind studied here, are another novel type; they are characterized by outcomes that are divergent from effective formal institutions. Accommodating informal institutions “create incentives to behave in ways that alter the substantive effects of formal rules, but without directly violating them; they contradict the spirit but not the letter, of the formal rules” (Helmke and Levitsky Reference Helmke and Levitsky2004, 729). Although accommodating informal institutions contradict the spirit of formal rules, they enhance the stability of those same institutions by reinforcing the status quo. They are “often created by actors who dislike outcomes generated by the formal rules but are unable to change or openly violate those rules. As such, they often help to reconcile these actors’ interests with the existing formal institutional arrangements” (Helmke and Levitsky Reference Helmke and Levitsky2004, 729). This article demonstrates that in the case of family care policies in MOFA, the informal institutions of total availability and presenteeism create divergent outcomes from family policies. For example, flex time allows people to create a schedule that better aligns with their family responsibilities; informal institutional norms that demand total availability or one’s presence at evening events conflict with the desired outcomes of flex time.

Formal and informal institutional rules regulate, obligate, and persuade actors to behave in certain ways; and actors interpret, adapt, resist, and reform them (Lowndes Reference Lowndes2020). These are iterative processes that develop over time. Interactions between formal and informal institutional rules and how actors within organizations interact with them play a central role in reproducing gendered institutions as well as generating change (Lowndes Reference Lowndes2020). These interactions between rules, norms, and actors are the micro-foundations of gendered political institutions. Capturing then analyzing these interactions allows us to uncover how the mutual constitution of actors, rules and practices shapes gendered institutions.

In addition to formal and informal institutional rules, feminist institutionalist research has identified informality as significant to shaping actors’ interactions with institutions. Informality, the lack of formal and informal institutional rules, often results in “the emergence of practices…that perpetuate men’s advantages in public life” (Franceschet Reference Franceschet and Waylen2017, 131). In probing the usefulness of informality as a concept to analyze and understand how institutions are gendered, how gendered institutions work as well as how they evolve, this research supports Franceschet’s (Reference Franceschet and Waylen2017) claim that informality privileges men. Informality burdens individuals with figuring out issues for which there are no institutional rules, allowing inequalities to remain unchecked. Yet, informality also offers opportunities for change because it allows space for improvisation to address challenges in the organization. The opportunities for individual improvisation could result in the emergence of new informal institutional rules or demands for the creation of formal rules.

The key distinction between informal institutions and informality is that informality lacks any kind of prescribed or proscribed actions and enforcement through sanctions. While both formal and informal institutions encourage some behaviors and discourage others, informality does neither. It is the lack of constraints in informality that provides more possibilities for change. For example, in the workplace formal institutions around maternity would consist of written rules that outline the benefits, including limits to time off, required time off, rules on coverage of work duties during leave, and so on. Informal rules might also exist; they might be competing, complementary, accommodating, or substitutive as discussed above. Informality lacks constraints, which allows a broad range of possibilities for what can be attempted, and responses to these actions might be inconsistent. So that, one person seeking a three-month leave might see their request declined or a shorter period might be granted while another person might have the request granted without question and yet a third person might face pressures to resign with no decision on the request. In one case below, we see a diplomat offered an opportunity to take sick leave to extend the time that she would have away from work after giving birth. Because informality lacks constraints, there are opportunities for someone seeking leave to gather information from others who made similar requests and use this information to create a template with characteristics of successful requests. There are numerous ways that actors could try to leverage the absence of constraints that characterize informality.

Formal rules, informal norms, and informality all shift with institutional layering over time. We will see that in this case, presenteeism and total availability were informal institutional rules that created expectations in what was essentially a male organization. When women joined the organization, they entered a situation where there were no formal or informal institutional rules specific to MOFA regarding parental leave at headquarters in Tokyo, nor being pregnant or giving birth at post. The originally male-coded norms of presenteeism and total availability eventually extended to women, making clear their gendered outcomes, most notably in women’s behavior — rewarding them for “behaving like men” — and in implications for whether they married, whether and when they had children, and how they arranged their family lives. With the implementation of formal institutional rules of family policies, presenteeism and total availability became accommodating informal institutional rules.

Methodology

Informal institutional rules are difficult to document without access to the organization. Elite actors in cloistered bureaucracies are notably difficult to study due to high barriers to access (Nair Reference Nair2021). This study uses narrative analysis of semi-structured interviews (Bode Reference Bode2020; Harel-Shalev and Daphna-Tekoah 2016) of women diplomats at MOFA to surface the informal institutional rules of the organization, and how actors engage both rules and practices. Interviews with women in leadership provide insight into the years before family policies were instituted. Interviews with mid-career women who are mothers of elementary school-age children and who took advantage of family policies help us examine whether these policies address the needs of women diplomats and, if not, why not.

This article is based on data gathered using fourteen semi-structured interviews with fourteen diplomats in Japan’s MOFA. Interviews were conducted in person, via video conferencing, and email between August and December 2021 and December 2023 and July 2024. In one case, the interviewee answered questions in writing via email; in another case, the interviewee answered questions in writing via email and sat for an interview via video conference; in one case, an interviewee was interviewed twice via video conferencing, once in 2021 and again in 2024. I interviewed nine women who made it to leadership positions at MOFA and two mid-career women diplomats. One of the women in leadership held a senior level position but was not at the ambassador level; the remaining eight were ambassadors or consuls general or had retired at that rank/position. Three interviews were informational interviews with a Director General, an Assistant Director, and a Deputy Director of Personnel — one of these was a man at ambassador rank who had previously served as Director of the Personnel division so he could offer insights on women’s career trajectories at MOFA.

Interview participants were recruited using the snowball method with four different contacts providing initial introductions — one a US academic, one a mid-career Japanese diplomat, one a contact in private industry, and one a professor at a Japanese university. Each of the initial contacts introduced others. At the start of the project, the goal was to interview women diplomats since it was their experiences at MOFA that were driving the research. The stated goal was to understand the career trajectories of women diplomats at MOFA. Understanding women’s career trajectories pointed to the need to include women in leadership as interviewees since their long tenure would provide the most clues to how careers progressed. The four contacts yielded three initial interviewees who were women in leadership; these interviewees led to others in leadership. It proved more difficult to access and interview mid-career women. Neither career track nor family status was considered in selecting interviewees; however, during later stages of the research there was a concerted effort to recruit mid-career women diplomats to participate. The questions were crafted to encourage the interview participants to reflect on and relive, not just remember or recount, their experiences. Interviewees were not directly asked whether they were married or had children. Instead, they were invited to tell their stories of whether and how being a woman and/or mother did or did not impact their careers through prompts such as “describe a situation where you felt confident and competent in your job; describe a challenging situation at work and how you resolved it; describe a situation where you realized that your gender mattered.”

Interviews with Japanese women ambassadors and consuls general who started their careers in the 1970s and 1980s reveal the lack of institutional support for diplomats with families. These women all rose to the top of diplomacy despite the demands of diplomatic work and family life. Their stories often sounded harrowing and yet, they managed. Now, with a focus on recruiting and retaining more women, MOFA’s recruitment processes have been reformed and new family policies implemented. Yet, the two diplomats who had elementary school–age or younger children at the time of our interviews expressed great frustration with the challenges presented by their diplomatic career and caring responsibilities. In one case, the interviewee ended her diplomatic career after nearly 20 years at MOFA and a promising future.

Interviews allow us to capture and examine the empirical complexities of actors’ experiences. The article focuses on women because we know very little about women diplomats’ experiences at MOFA. Women’s empowerment is a significant part of Japan’s foreign policy. Both domestic and international efforts are included under the slogan, “Japan strives to create a world where women shine.” Japan’s emphasis on women’s empowerment in developing countries is paradoxical given its own consistently low rankings on international gender equity measures (Coleman Reference Coleman2017, Reference Coleman and Steele2019). Examining the experiences of women in the organization tasked with implementing Japan’s foreign policy to empower women abroad forces us to reexamine whether, and to what extent, the values expressed in shared international agendas such as Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) initiatives also guide national MFAs that claim to operationalize these initiatives through foreign policy.

Interviewing women in leadership provides insight into how women managed family care issues, especially raising children, before the introduction of family policies, and allows us to understand the history of these issues at MOFA and how they evolved and impact women diplomats with young children now. What we learn will help the Japanese government’s efforts to make women “shine.”

The Gendered Context of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Historically, the majority of candidates for jobs in Japan’s national bureaucracy graduated from four top universities — two public universities, the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University, and two private universities, Waseda University and Keio University; the vast majority of those at MOFA graduated from the University of Tokyo’s Faculty of Law. Usually, candidates enter MOFA upon graduating from college and taking an exam for one of three employment tracks: generalist, specialist, or administrative assistance track. The notoriously difficult entrance exam was credited with maintaining a system based on merit. This gender-neutral understanding of MOFA’s institutional context is the narrative that emerges from interviews. In fact, women in leadership stressed that the test that was equally open to women and men played a significant role in their decision to join MOFA or viewed it later as one way that they felt sure that discrimination was not a factor in their employment. It is only with a closer narrative analysis of these semi-structured interviews that we begin to uncover the gendered nature of the institution.

Although there were some graduates of the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University among the women diplomats interviewed for this study, more of them were graduates of other private universities in Tokyo. This diversity in educational background was inevitable given the small number of women attending the top universities from which most bureaucrats are recruited. Women were allowed entry to Tokyo University starting in 1946. Noble (Reference Noble and Steele2019) found that as recently as 2010, Tokyo University had 19% women, Kyoto University 22%, Keio University 32%, and Waseda University 34%. So, it is not surprising that women who entered MOFA in the 1980s and are at the apex of leadership positions now were drawn from a broader pool of candidates, notably the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, where many students major in language and culture and have an interest in working abroad. In short, there is a significant gender gap in the number of women at the top national universities, University of Tokyo and Kyoto University, that are the top feeder schools for MOFA. Recent studies exploring the reasons behind the gender gap consider cultural and structural explanations (Emori and Kawasaki 2024; Yaguchi 2024).

While the exam-based meritocratic nature of Japan’s national bureaucracy is lauded, the inequities embedded in the system often go unrecognized. While the exam is ostensibly an objective measure that is the foundation of a meritorious system, there are sorting mechanisms that redirect potential candidates long before the exam. Passing entrance exams at top universities often hinges on paying for cram schools to prepare for the exams. According to the University of Tokyo Faculty of Law website, as of May 2024 women were 35% of juniors and seniors enrolled in the department.Footnote ² Scandals such as the one that erupted in 2018 after it had been revealed that 10 Japanese medical schools, including the prestigious Tokyo Medical University, suppressed the scores of female applicants to reduce the number of female entrants because the administrators believed that women would not remain in the practice of medicine. To put it plainly, the men in charge thought that a space in the incoming class occupied by a woman was more likely to be a “wasted” space that would be put to better use by a man. Investigations found that the scandal stretched as far back as 2006 and also included preferences for the children of alumnae. Even if university entry is not corrupted, this example demonstrates the discriminatory attitudes that are barriers to women’s entrance. Corruption aside, we see that in practice, narrowing the MOFA entrance exam eligibility pool begins well before entering university.

Today, doing well on the written exam is necessary but not sufficient to gain employment at MOFA; the required interview process and weighting are a less well understood part of the process. There is also the matter of which test candidates opted to take and the implications this would have for their career path. Those who become generalists (also known as the career track) enter onto a “fast track” employment trajectory meant to take them into MOFA leadership. Entering as a (language/area) specialist means lower pay and does not guarantee a career that includes progressing to managerial or leadership roles. Moreover, even those who enter with a high level of proficiency in a particular language have little control over the language or geographical region to which they are assigned to develop expertise; this has implications for diplomats’ placement and career trajectory. Most of the women leaders interviewed entered MOFA on the specialist track and did not necessarily expect to make it to the ranks of ambassador.

This gendered organizational context of MOFA is embedded in a broader social context with gender norms that also permeate the Ministry. In Japan, women are still primarily responsible for childcare and homemaking. Historically, this meant that women were expected to retire upon marriage or when they had children. Even in situations where women are employed, their job is viewed as secondary to family responsibilities. Unlike men, who only have to manage their work lives, women who work manage both work and family (Ogasawara Reference Ogasawara1998). With more women continuing their careers even after marrying and having children, there is renewed attention to other barriers. The most notable is shōichi no kabe. This translates into “first grade wall/barrier.” In the past, women would often leave the workforce when they married or had their first child and reenter when the youngest child started elementary school. Now, due to childcare leave policies that allow between one and three years leave and broader access to daycare facilities, there is a shift in focus to shōichi no kabe. This is literally when parents — typically mothers — face an avalanche of responsibilities of having a child enter elementary school (Tamura Reference Tamura2024).Footnote ³ At MOFA and other national bureaucracies, this coincides with the expiration of most of the family policies designed to help (women) achieve balance between work and family responsibilities (Author Interview July 19, 2024, MOFA Deputy Director of Personnel).Footnote ⁴

Informality Reigned in the Early Days of Women at MOFA

The legacy of the exclusion of women from MOFA, then the inclusion of very few women, resulted in informality — that is, a lack of formal and informal norms, rules, and practices specifically regarding maternity leave and childcare — at the Ministry. Informality at MOFA required women diplomats to improvise solutions to the challenges they faced: having to work long hours, travel overseas, and being posted abroad for extended periods while pregnant or caring for children, parents, or themselves when they had a health issue that needed ongoing attention. So, while the issues women faced were similar — managing work and personal life — their responses varied. The improvised nature of solutions and the small number of women in the organization resulted in outcomes so diffuse that they did not become embedded in informal institutional rules or impact the Ministry in a significant or patterned way.

Unlike some Western MFAs, Japan’s MOFA never had a marriage ban, but social norms assumed that women would retire upon marriage or having children (Flowers 2009, 76–77).Footnote ⁵ When a diplomat and future (ambassador/consul general) informed her boss that she was planning to marry a colleague, he suggested that she retire. She had no intention of doing so and although male privilege meant that the boss made no objection to her continuing to work after her fiancé assured him that he had no intention of making her retire and supported her continuing her diplomatic career, it set an example of a woman continuing in diplomacy after marriage and taking children along when posted abroad (#8 December 2, 2021). There were also women who became pregnant during foreign postings. When one woman’s male colleague told her she would have to return to Tokyo to give birth, she asked “why?”; he dropped the matter and she was not mandated to return. A different woman gave birth during her posting in Southeast Asia (#4 Author Interview September 21, 2021), and another gave birth when posted abroad in Europe (#5 Author Interview October 12, 2021). Some had heard rumors that women serving abroad had been made to return to Tokyo after becoming pregnant while posted abroad, but they did not hear these rumors until years after they themselves had become pregnant or given birth during an overseas posting (#4 Author Interview September 21, 2021) demonstrating the absence of formal and informal institutional rules on this issue.

By the late 1980s, some women diplomats chose to have children and continue their careers. For these women, there were few resources or guidelines on how pregnancy, childbirth, and childrearing would be handled at the Ministry in Tokyo and at overseas placements. Aside from a six- to eight-week maternity leave mandated by the Labor Standards Law, there were no formal or informal institutional rules on these issues at MOFA. Women negotiated family issues at MOFA during that time in a context of informality. Informality and informal institutional rules shaped the institution in key ways and with gendered outcomes.

Feminist institutionalist scholarship that centers informality finds that women often leverage informality to create networks to empower themselves and remedy being excluded from political power and institutions. They organize themselves as women to create informal rules to counter informality that keeps them from accessing power. This approach has not been used by women at MOFA. Candidate selection, the focus of Piscopo’s (2017) study of informality and Franceschet’s (Reference Franceschet and Waylen2017) examination of informality in Chile’s executive branch, the locus of political power in the country, are institutions based explicitly on political contestation so leveraging this to improve one’s own position is accepted and maybe even expected. Diplomats also have an interest in furthering their own position and creating networks is an essential part of their work. Yet, the nature of the institution — MOFA is extremely hierarchical — and expectations for its actors — that they be loyal team players — limit overt competition within the organization. Moreover, like senpai-kohai relationships (hierarchical relationships based on age and seniority) throughout Japanese society, the nature of internal networks at MOFA is hierarchical, not horizontal. Women have not organized as women; those with children have not networked as mothers.Footnote ⁶ Hierarchical relationships with those who hold power can benefit one’s career but there seems to be nothing to gain — and a lot to lose — in upsetting established networks.Footnote ⁷ Possibilities that come with informality are limited in institutions such as MOFA that are characterized by hierarchical relationships and loyalty, not individual networks and political contestation. These issues are related insofar as when more women have access to power in the institution, they might address needs for better work-life balance, but in this case, informality on women balancing demands of work and family care issues is separate from addressing informality to remedy lack of access to political power.

Informal Institutional Rules at MOFA in the Years Before Family Policies: Total Availability and Presenteeism

The relationship between actors and institutions is dynamic and highly generative. Formal and informal institutional rules regulate, obligate, and persuade actors; and actors’ responses can confirm, further entrench, or challenge these rules (Lowndes Reference Lowndes2020). Analysis of how actors engage with institutional rules is useful in understanding how organizations are gendered and whether they might be reformed with an eye to becoming more equal. This section will use narrative analysis of interviews with women diplomats to surface gendered practices and informal rules at MOFA and examine how they shaped women diplomats.

Informal institutional rules manifested in seemingly trivial everyday practices. For example, one woman spoke of learning to eat lunch quickly after noticing that when she went to lunch with her colleagues, they had to wait for her to finish eating: “when I went for lunch with my colleagues, I was the only woman. And our division was very, very busy, the security affairs division. So, we had a very quick lunch at a nearby place, but they ate so fast. … Maybe they spent about 20 minutes or so for dining out. … I was often the only woman in a group. So, I tried to adjust. Like, for example, when they were eating, I realized they are waiting just for me to finish. So, I tried very hard to eat as fast as I could. And then I realized, I ate really fast, like sometimes even faster than those male colleagues” (#6 Author Interview October 19, 2021). This same diplomat described times when her children forgot their house keys and their neighbor was not available to host them until she arrived home; she would run to meet them at Kasumigaseki Station. “I couldn’t leave the desk for long … for maybe five or up to ten minutes. I went to Kasumigaseki Station and at the station I handed over the house key” (#6 Author Interview October 19, 2021).

Another woman diplomat who entered MOFA in the early 1980s described single women with no children who “acted like men” by smoking, golfing, and staying out all night playing mahjong with male colleagues: “In the 1980s, there were women, most of them stayed single without building family lives, behaving like men working overtime, and smoking in the office. … So, I’ve seen women behave like men, and I heard they were playing golf with men, and they were playing mahjong overnight, and they come to the office without sleeping at all. And they, … behave just like men, were mainly with men, and they were promoted. Because men liked them [and thought] ‘oh, they are not women.’ They [worked] just like, you know, powerful horses, many hours just like men. So those women prevailed in some areas, especially in the foreign ministry promotion” (#7 Author Interview November 10, 2021). She went on to describe how in the late 1980s some women, she among them, chose to have children but they continued to work late like everyone else; they did not refuse to work overtime because they were mothers. The prevailing gender norms were based on unencumbered male diplomats who could work long hours, then stay out all night with colleagues. As there were no models for how women diplomats should behave at MOFA, many women initially copied their male colleagues to fit in and be successful. This meant that gender norms and gendered workplace expectations went unchallenged until women decided not only to marry but to have children and continue their diplomatic work.

A different diplomat described herself as working “like a man” when she continued to prioritize work while raising her children:

She went on to describe a situation when she was posted abroad and had her children with her when her babysitter suddenly quit. She explained that she “couldn’t work like a man then” and recounted requesting to leave work early until she was able to find a new babysitter to take care of her youngest child after daycare and until she returned home at the end of her work day.

These women’s narratives reveal that what they describe are not disconnected, trivial incidents or matters that can be dismissed as an individual’s choice. These experiences demonstrate a pattern of gendered practices that constitute informal but obligatory institutional rules delineating workplace expectations. In this case, they are part of a norm of total availability where work takes priority over everything else (Chappell and Galea Reference Chappell, Galea, Waylen and Waylen2017, 80); including biological needs such as eating. This norm permeated Japanese workplaces and required that men commit to being available to socialize in the evenings after working long hours of overtime (Ogasawara Reference Ogasawara1998). This expectation confirmed masculine identity while excluding women. Total availability underpinned the salary man culture, the hegemonic masculinity based in Japan’s corporate culture, and that permeated broader society in the 1980s through the early 2000s. Aspects of the expectation of total availability remain in some workplaces; especially those that continue to rely on seniority pay and promotion with a model of long-term (no longer lifetime) employment. Total availability is imbued with symbolic meaning in the attributes of masculinity — unencumbered by family or other reproductive labor. In other words, total availability assumes workers do not have to do any care work for themselves or others, including preparing meals, washing clothes, nurturing children, supervising homework, and so on.Footnote ⁸

In assessing the impact of family policies, it is essential to analyze how these formal rules interact with informal ones such as total availability. The informal institutional rules of total availability and presenteeism are rooted in the unencumbered male as ideal worker. Total availability requires work to take priority over everything else, including family responsibilities. This norm devalues caregiving and other family responsibilities and those primarily associated with these roles — women. Presenteeism is a similar informal rule but it is centered on being present in the office and working long hours even if there are no specific tasks that need to be done in a timely manner (Chappell and Galea Reference Chappell, Galea, Waylen and Waylen2017, 83). Presenteeism also includes cases where after-work socializing is expected. Like total availability, this informal rule is also rooted in notions of the ideal worker; it is reinforced by the nature of diplomatic work taking place across multiple time zones, which requires odd working hours.

Presenteeism and total availability contribute to an existing culture at MOFA of workplace surveillance. As in many work settings, surveillance is seen as a normal part of determining promotions and assignments. This sense was also the case in Australia (Stephensen 2024) and seems especially common in diplomatic work. Most of the diplomats interviewed expressed a lack of clarity about how personnel decisions are made at MOFA. Some acknowledged that they had the opportunity to meet with human resources once a year and their supervisors twice a year to express their “hopes and desires” based on their career goals and family situation (#11 Author Interview, March 19, 2024). Yet, they all also admitted that these expressions seemed to carry little weight and diplomats were placed where they were needed. The basis for personnel placements seems to take organizational needs and individual strengths and weaknesses into consideration but they are otherwise unclear. In such cases, regular workplace surveillance takes on heightened importance for determining promotions and placement. In this case of uncertainty, diplomats might perceive surveillance as more important than it actually is. One diplomat emphasized the importance of workplace surveillance throughout her career: “I think I did my best my whole career. And, I was lucky that somebody was always watching me, and I am sure that they supported me somehow for my promotions” (#9 Author Interview, December 15, 2021). If this is indeed the case, and the ability to observe people on the job, not just to evaluate work product, is important for personnel decisions, then the informal institutional rules of presenteeism and total availability will continue to subvert family policies.

Before the institution of childcare leave policies, Japan’s Labor Standards Law codified a six- to eight-week maternity leave for all women in the workforce. After the initial leave, it was up to each woman to figure out managing career demands and childcare on their own.

Women were not always left on their own to manage these issues; some of the diplomats interviewed mentioned male bosses and mentors who tried to assist. One woman’s boss volunteered a solution to allow her more leave after the birth of her child. Despite his generous solution, he called her back to work before her leave was over. The norm of total availability intruded. “At that time, Japanese law did not allow the mother to have the maternity leave longer than six or eight weeks. But, the boss suggested to me to take a sick leave. So, I took advantage of his recommendation. I started to seek help to take sick leave in addition to the maternity leave. But, after a month, the director called me and asked me to please come back to the office because the prime minister [of the country where I had been posted and left when I was eight months pregnant] was paying an official visit to Japan so he needed my power” (#8 Author Interview December 2, 2021).

Both MOFA and Japan’s childcare system fell short of meeting the needs of families where both parents worked full time. This experience of a woman diplomat whose husband was also a diplomat demonstrates the challenges:

This case, where both parents were diplomats, clearly demonstrates that MOFA was not concerned about how families dealt with childcare crises; they assumed the typical diplomat had a wife at home to deal with these kinds of issues. Of course, in this case, the wife was also a diplomat.

These examples suggest that it was not unusual for women to go to extremes, such as handing their children over at the airport on their way to international meetings, to continue to fulfil their work responsibilities. Their feelings of being harried, overwhelmed, and burdened by constantly managing conflicts between work and family did not preclude them from figuring out ways to balance on the tightrope. In cases where the women in top leadership positions of consul general or ambassador had children, they often gave birth to at least one child before there was a robust childcare leave system in place. Contorting like acrobats and walking on tightropes, they made do while their children were young. One diplomat described a different approach:

Although there was no policy allowing flexible work hours, by the time this woman had children, she was able to request a position that did not have the stressful demands of overseas travel and the expectation for overtime work. Given that she was eventually promoted to Ambassador and represented Japan abroad raises the question of whether requesting such a position when her children were young harmed her career. It is worth noting that she recounted learning organizational skills that she believed helped her in her career once her children were older and she moved on to other positions. Only one other woman spoke of requesting a post where she would not have to work overtime or to travel abroad. She made the request when she was dealing with her own health issue and she thought the choice was between cutting back and leaving the ministry entirely (#10 Author Interview January 16, 2024). There is no way to know whether these two women might have climbed the ranks more rapidly had they not taken a step back to care for children or their own health.

While everyone praised the creation of family policies and they clearly benefit those who take advantage of them to pursue their work at the ministry and family responsibilities, interviewees also recognized that there is a price for a less harrowing balancing act. One diplomat recounted how she had her first child before the child leave system and other family policies were instituted. When I asked whether these policies put those who took advantage of them at a disadvantage, she responded:

Of particular note is that she acknowledges that while those who take leave face some disadvantage, she suggests that this is unintentional and that it can be made up over the course of a career. The underlying premise is that there is a timeline with hatch marks indicating career achievements. This timeline does not change with the introduction of flextime, childcare leave, and other family policies. An individual’s timeline is overlain on the timeline of career achievements, and it might take longer for her to reach the hatch marks; these are not adjusted regardless of how talented she may be. Stephensen (2024) reported similar findings in Australian international affairs institutions. Despite this clarity, all the interviews indicated that personnel decisions were opaque, and more recent generations of women diplomats found this and the unchanging timeline of career achievements frustrating. This lack of transparency led to the perception of workplace surveillance as essential to determine when and where promotions should be determined.

Interactions Between Actors and Rules After the Implementation of Leave Policies

Family policies are gendered rules with benefits available to both men and women but the policies impact men and women differently. This section will demonstrate how the gendered outcomes of family policies further entrench gender at MOFA, which threatens to undermine the long-term goal of the family care policies: to promote gender balance in the institution and retain women to increase their numbers in leadership.

Contemporary childcare leave policies allow a parent to take up to three years leave to care for each child that they have. The social insurance program provides partial pay during the leave period, and people can return to work after the end of the leave period. Although the leave is available to both mothers and fathers, women usually take the leave, and for longer periods than men, and so are more likely to have their career impacted. In 2021, 34% of the men at MOFA who became new fathers that year and were eligible for childcare leave actually took it; that was up from 30% in 2020. In both years, 98% of women who gave birth and were eligible for the leave took it (Kokka kōmuin no ikuji kyūgyō no shinki syutoku jyōkyō, 2024).Footnote ⁹ More detailed data is available for men on the administrative track who were eligible for leave: in 2021, they took an average of 52 days of childcare leave, with an average of 22 of these in the first eight weeks after birth; 86% of men (97 individuals) took more than one month leave but less than one year (Reiwa san nendo ni kodomo ga umareta dansei shokuin no ikuji ni shitagau kyūfuku kyūgyō no shutoku jyōkyō, 2024).Footnote ¹⁰

Mid-career women diplomats who took the leave mentioned that they believed childcare leave hurts women’s careers but enhanced men’s careers. The longer leaves, which women usually take, of at least one year, were believed to negatively impact their career progression, and the shorter leaves that men tended to take were believed to improve their image from the perspective of the organization (Flowers 2022). We know that in the corporate world, breaks in service hurts careers (Steel 2019). Ogasawara (Reference Ogasawara and Steele2019) finds that of the 23 highly educated, white-collar men living in the Tokyo area whom she interviewed in her study of men married to women who have worked full time since graduation, almost half of the men — 11 — did not take on any parental responsibilities and did not make any adjustments at work when their children were born. She argues that in Japan, a “work norm” that is separate from gender roles drives men to seek success in careers and that this success at work is central to their masculine identity (Ogasawara Reference Ogasawara and Steele2019, 92–95). Most of the men who did not adjust their work when they had children worked for large companies, and most of the men who did make adjustments held more flexible jobs and earned less than their wives. The degree to which men experienced negative impacts on their careers depended on the extent to which they compromised; some men did indeed damage their chances for promotion by making adjustments to their work lives so that they could participate more in child rearing (Ogasawara Reference Ogasawara and Steele2019, 92).

Before the advent of family policies at MOFA, women reported instances of what they called “maternity harassment” (#7 Author Interview November 10, 2021). These were relayed as isolated instances of judgment about a woman’s productivity or commitment to work because of her status as a mother and family demands. In fact, they were practices that reinforced the informal rules of total availability and presenteeism by seeking to sanction those who transgressed them. The existence of a child leave policy seems to have the effect of regularizing and institutionalizing the leave, and the negative evaluations and judgments against women who take advantage of the leave. The actors who get to interpret, adapt, resist, and reform the rules are not only the women who take advantage of the leave policy, but all diplomats at MOFA. In addition, unlike women who did not have access to childcare leave when their children were young, some women diplomats today feel penalized for having taken leave. Women in leadership and the former director of personnel noted that men are highly encouraged to take even a few weeks childcare leave; reflecting at least a rhetorical commitment by MOFA to normalize leave among men. Yet, the gendered outcomes will remain with women’s careers advancing more slowly and men reaping the benefits of demonstrating a commitment to family by taking a short leave that might be meaningful to his family, but will not slow his career advancement. In Ogasawara’s study mentioned above, she found that there were only two men of 23 who took a one-month leave when their children were born. They both received pushback from their bosses but took the leaves anyway (Ogasawara Reference Ogasawara and Steele2019, 91). So, despite the men being legally eligible to take the leave, many are pressured not to do so under threat of it negatively impacting their position at work. These two men reportedly took the leave anyway because they were not interested in advancing in the company’s hierarchy. Unless and until there is more equity in the length of childcare leave between men and women or other policies to mitigate the gendered outcomes, there will remain a differential impact on their careers.

The childcare leave policy’s regulative and normative impacts are just what we would expect — the policy regulates the availability and terms of the leave and imposes obligations, though it does not obligate people to take the leave. Although the persuasive aspect of the rule is less developed, there has been a concerted effort to normalize men taking childcare leave. In 2024, a handbook published by the Cabinet Secretariat’s HR Bureau showcased men who are fathers, took child leave, and are leaders in the workplace (Reiwa san nendo ni kodomo ga umareta dansei shokuin no ikuji ni shitagau kyūfuku kyūgyō no shutoku jyōkyō, 2024). These efforts to persuade men to take at least a short childcare leave are important to MOFA as an employer and, therefore, likely to enhance their standing. Men will adapt their behavior to be in line with the most beneficial way to use the childcare leave. Attempts to persuade men that taking childcare leave is not contrary to being a leader in the organization encourage men to be engaged fathers and promise that choosing to do so will not hurt their chances to advance at work (Reiwa san nendo ni kodomo ga umareta dansei shokuin no ikuji ni shitagau kyūfuku kyūgyō no shutoku jyōkyō, 2024). These attempts at persuasion remain silent on whether women can be engaged parents and gain the opportunity to advance to leadership positions.

Recently, the national government has shown a willingness to aggressively enact policies to increase the number of women in MOFA and other national bureaucracies. A similarly aggressive approach is required to address the gendered effects of childcare leave policies. One obvious response that some countries have tried is to mandate that both parents share the childcare leave more equally. So, if one year leave is allowed, each partner is only eligible for a portion of that leave. Perhaps an even more radical approach would be to rethink how progress in career advancement is measured. That would require a clear rethinking of the basic idea that there is a rigid and unchanging career timeline with hatch marks indicating career milestones. MOFA has demonstrated an ability to recognize and reward talent, as they have done by promoting many capable women who entered the Ministry on the specialist track, which has a slower progression to leadership and no guarantee of reaching the highest ranks. This can and should be expanded to include a willingness to proactively rethink promotion requirements, especially rigid requirements that focus more on length of service as a marker of readiness rather than skills acquisition, competency, and expertise. Length of service is only one aspect of how skills, competency, and expertise are developed; and longer service is not indicative of ability. Making these requirements transparent would further serve to reform the informal rules since clarity on placement and promotion would decrease reliance on workplace surveillance.

Flextime, ikuji jikan (childcare time), and hayade (early arrival/early departure) policies are also important in providing the flexibility that diplomats need to manage work and family responsibilities. While it seems like flextime policies should be the easiest of the family policies to implement, flextime is actually most complicated by the workplace norm of total availability. Unlike childcare leave, when people are “out of sight” for the duration of their leave, flextime means that people are around but not all the time. Their presence can draw attention to their absence early in the day or late in the evening. The noticeable absences count against people by work groups that might come to view them as unreliable, even when they have documented flexible work hours. Another potential issue emerged from the interviews, above one diplomat discussed how when her children were in nursery school, she requested working in an area where there were no overseas trips and no overtime so work ended consistently at 5:45 pm. This was before flextime policies were institutionalized. Now that there are formal rules, more people could request such positions. The danger is that those on flextime might become clustered in specific departments or sections, an issue that two interviewees raised. No matter the reason, if those working flexible schedules are clustered together, there is more likely to be a stigma attached to them, the sections where they work, or both. Given the social and cultural norms around childcare in Japan, there is a good chance that a large majority of diplomats working flexible hours are women with children or doing other care work. Thus, there is a danger of gendering the areas where they work, similar to what we see in some female-dominated professions and legislative specialties, where women and marginalized men work on “feminine issues” in areas such as education or family policies. The potential for this kind of gendering of certain work and the resulting stigma and devaluing was never an issue before there was a critical mass of women diplomats. In the past, the Ministry introduced women to all areas of service as the number of missions abroad increased. One interviewee was the first of two women to serve in developing countries that were seen at the time as “hardship” posts. So, from early on, there seemed to be a commitment to women serving wherever Japan had missions, except in countries where women could not be effective because of cultural issues. It is ironic that in the search for more equitable work situations for people with families, gender might become more entrenched in MOFA.

Childcare time (ikuji jikan) policies are similar to flextime but are meant specifically for parents of young children to have shorter work days, not just to rearrange work hours. This policy entitles parents of young children to have a work day that is two hours shorter, time meant for child rearing. Ikuji jikan can be used in conjunction with flex time but it is not necessary to use it in this way. However, taking advantage of these policies comes with a financial penalty since every half hour taken results in a corresponding decrease in pay.

In fact, according to the two women diplomats with young children, it is very difficult to take advantage of these policies when there is work that has to be done. “Yeah, I don’t think I can balance between the work and childcare now. I’d like more time with my children. I thought I’d take childcare time (ikuji jikan) for two hours a day. In principle, I can but actually, I cannot take the full two hours. So, usually I leave the office around six o’clock. It takes more than one hour to get home so it’s about seven thirty or eight o’clock when I get home” (#11 Author Interview March 19, 2024).

Post-Covid policies that retained remote work expanded opportunities but did not alleviate concerns of the two diplomats with young children. Both reported that they often worked remotely but others in their section were spending more days in the office than working remotely. One of the women reported still needing to go into the office fairly often for meetings, which meant working in the office on those days (#11 Author Interview March 19, 2024). The other woman found that even though remote work helped with the challenges of raising children and working, total availability was still a problem.

Eldercare policies are a bit different but they are essential to the Ministry. Women often feel pressure to fill the role of caregiver to elderly family members. Given the general longevity and health of the aged in Japan, many diplomats will be late in their career when they need to care for aging parents. Thus, in general, needing to care for elders is less likely to impact diplomats’ career development for most of their professional lives. These diplomats are likely to be in leadership positions, including ambassadorships abroad, when their parents need care. The women ambassadors and consuls general interviewed often expressed feeling very indebted to their parents, especially their own mothers. It was clear that many of those who had children felt that they would not have been able to pursue their diplomatic careers without their own mothers stepping in to support them when their children were small. Since the need to care for the aged comes late in one’s career, the impact can be significant for the institution as it is losing a high level of expertise that has been developed over many years. This expertise is not easily replaced. If women, like one of the respondents in this study, choose to retire at this stage, it further contributes to low numbers of women in leadership and loss of expertise.