This is one of the articles in a series of “My Decent Work Declaration,” contributed to WAN’s HP as part of a promotion for the upcoming WAN Symposium 2016.


As the cherry blossoms came into bloom again this year, my career as a working mother reached as long as eight years. In retrospect, those were the days far from easy, since I have been working fulltime while mothering two children.

In a working environment of the present time long and devoted working hours is regarded as virtue, rather than a vicious practice, and unpaid overtime work highly evaluated as an expression of loyalty. Under such circumstances, I often found it psychologically stressful to be unable to work overtime because I had nursing babies. It was also physically tough to do domestic work and child care at the sacrifice of my sleeping hours even though I could share those burdens with my family.

The only thing I knew for sure in the midst of the almost unbearable hardship was that I had to do something so I never hand down the same problems to our children.

I studied as hard as men at school and made no less effort to get a job and develop my career. But as a result of all those hard works, I was left behind, distressed and wearied, because my working career was disrupted by pregnancy and childbirth and it was impossible for me to become a model worker dedicated to the company. If this is a typical case of a working mother, it is extremely tragic.

What I finally realized is that I should never hand over to the next generation the difficult working and living conditions I experienced as a working mother but we must change them. Now that I know perfectly well that all these difficulties are not personal but social, what we should try to do is obvious: to change the environment of full time employees who are forced to work excessively long and hard hours; to change the status of non-fulltime workers whose wages and quality of life are inevitably low, to do whatever I think I can do myself to change the society so that everyone can access to a decent work or a respected work one deserves for.

To be more specific, the first thing I should do is to pay more attention to labor issues and learn about them; to be connected to many other people who can share various concerns to express then in one voice; and to reexamine my own working practice so as to create a workers-oriented environment at my own workplace by questioning about the existing values. Toward the goal of “Decent Work for Everyone!” I have just made a small step forward but will make efforts with many others so we can smile all together in future.

Original article: https://wan.or.jp/article/show/6582

Translated by FUKUOKA A. A.