History of Carrer Women

I went to a monthly officers' meeting of the Toastmasters ( I'm a secretary there!) and after that, we had a New Year's party at Omotesando.

I sat next to Naoko, who owns an apparel company. She graduated from Tokyo University, which is the most prestigious university in Japan.
She looks like a perfect career woman, but she had a history of conflict between her conservative husband.

When Naoko, who are in her 50's, graduated from university, most girl students didn't do job-hunt. They got engaged when they were in college, and married just after graduation.
But Naoko started to work for a big bank affiliated to the government.
However, women were not allowed to attend the meeting. They were supposed to serve tea or do some assistant work. There was no way to get promoted for women.

One year later, her parent brought a matchmaking. The guy was a physician, and graduated from same university as her. When they met the second time, the guy proposed marriage to her, because he "didn't want to waste my time," as he said.

They got married. Of course she quit her job. They had three children.
Later, all of them became physicians like their dad. Naoko was happy, but she was not free. Her husband asked her to stay home all the time. One night, she went out reunion of her university. When she got home at 10:00 or so, her house's door was already locked. Her husband didn't let her in that night.

When she was in her late 40's, she wondered what her life was.
She decided to start her business. After she started to work, her husband started not to give her the cost of living. She had a hard life, but she didn't quit her job this time.
All of her children said to her, "Mom, you can divorce him. We are already grown-ups. No problem!" But she didn't want to. Why? She said, she thought "We don't need to divorce. We can still live together."

She had never mentioned about her job at home. She knew her husband thought her job was "just for killing time." If she worked hard to take care of him at home, there were not so big problems. However, once she felt the crisis of divorce. That was, her oversea business trip. Her shop was filled with French materials, so she had to visit France often to stock. Her husband became furious about her going, but time thawed the ice between them.

She has had "tries and errors" for 15 years. Now she works from 10:00-19:00. She still doesn't talk about her job to her husband. But, they were still married.

She told us how amazing the social change about "women working" is for past 30 years. Now career women are not so unusual... because, many women like Naoko "has fought" with many things!!!