This series explores topics surrounding women who began their careers in Japan around the time of the implementation of equal opportunities employment legislation in the mid-1980s. With many now reaching the age of retirement, it is hoped their stories can provide insight and lessons for women in Japan’s professional world today.
When Asako Osaki — today an independent expert and advocate based in Japan focused on gender equality — told her mother that she planned to marry her then-boyfriend, a Japanese expatriate in New York, as she approached graduation from Sophia University in 1994 after a year of studying journalism at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, the response was far from what a bride-to-be wanted to hear: Why jump into the system of constraint that is marriage?
"My mother was totally against my young marriage (before establishing financial independence)," Osaki recalled when we recently spoke.
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