This book examines what motivates Japanese women to pursue professional careers in the contemporary neoliberal economy, and how they reconfigure notions of selfhood while doing so. It analyses how professional women contest conventional notions of femininity and negotiate new gender roles and cultural meanings. Based on extensive fieldwork, Anne Stefanie Aronsson explores how professional women create new social identities through the mutual conditioning of structure and self, and asks in turn how their actions change the gendering of the workforce, and how women come to understand their experiences.

Anne Stefanie Aronsson holds a PhD in Anthropology from Yale University, USA

1. Introduction 2. Women and Work in Modern Japan 3. Identity, Family, and Career 4. Pioneering Female Career tracks in Japan - Women in Their Sixties and Above 5. The Performative Aspect of Self-Fulfilling Prophecies - Women in Their Fifties 6. Through the Labyrinth of Their Working Lives - Women in Their Forties 7. Reevaluating the Self - Women in Their Thirties 8. Transitioning to a Career - Women in Their Twenties 9. Conclusion