Why Don’t Japanese Working Women Hire Household Help?
Outsourcing housework could help to promote gender equality in Japan
A few years ago, while I was attending the Japan Writers’ Conference, a fellow expat writer and university professor commented on my output. I joked that the reason I managed to write a lot was because I prioritized writing over housework, and that my house was a mess.
“Oh, I have someone come in to do that,” she said. My friend lives in Tokyo, where it is probably easier to find household help. In fact, there are several companies such as Benriya-san and Pinay Housekeeping Service, which dispatch maids and babysitters to private residences.
Here in my neighborhood in Tokushima, the idea of hiring someone to come to my house to clean so that I can write stories, novels, and essays like this one, seems beyond the pale. What would the neighbors think? I live in an area where women wear their aprons even when they leave the house, as if they are advertising their pride in housework.
And yet, Japanese women are notoriously stressed and exhausted from trying to balance paid work with household chores and caregiving. Much has been written about how little Japanese men help out around the house, mostly because they are expected to work long hours at the office. This has been blamed for the low rate of women’s participation in business and government — and for their reluctance to have children.
Even so, the issue of men doing less at home than women is not a uniquely Japanese problem. Women do most of the housework in just about every country on earth. And yet while professional American women often hire household help, very few Japanese women do. Why is that?
In order to get some answers, Professor Yoko Kita of Kyoto Notre Dame University and I conducted a survey. We asked 91 working women living in Japan whether or not they had ever hired someone to help out with childcare or household tasks. We also asked whether they would consider doing so.
Out of all 91 respondents, only ten had hired someone to help with housework or had done so in the past. None of them were Japanese. Of the ten, nine were Western women living in Japan, whereas the remaining one was a German woman married to a Japanese man living in Spain.
They replied that they had hired someone to do domestic labor because they didn’t have enough time to do it themselves, and they wanted to have time to do other things, or because they didn’t like doing housework. Among the tasks completed by hired help were vacuuming, cleaning the toilet, cleaning the bathtub, dusting, mopping floors, hanging out laundry, making beds, ironing, and replacing screens.
Several respondents had hired help through their local Silver Human Resource Centers, a program which provides part-time, paid employment to retirement-aged men and women. A couple of others, who were university instructors, hired students for babysitting, tutoring, and other tasks. Some respondents mentioned working alongside their hired helpers.
As for the remaining 81 respondents, 39 replied that they would consider hiring someone to do housework. Those that wouldn’t mentioned that they could do it by themselves (55%) or that they enjoyed doing housework (17%).
More negative reasons included concerns about privacy, theft, the expense, and what other people would think. Some respondents, especially those who lived in multi-generational homes with their Japanese in-laws, said that their husbands or in-laws would not approve. One foreign woman confessed to secretly hiring help; her husband didn’t know about it. For the record, no one cited ethical considerations as a reason for not hiring help.
Thus, in comparison with women in many other countries, Japanese women are reluctant to outsource housework. Things may be changing, however. In another survey, in which we investigated 400 Japanese university students’ attitudes toward domestic labor, we asked for ideas on how to achieve gender parity in Japan. The majority said that they would divide housework equally with their partners, but 27 said that they would hire a professional.
