This story is part of a package on women in Japan. The introduction is here.



Thirty years after the women's rights movement reached Japan, the nation's teenage girls might by now be expected to be besieging bastions of male dominance in their fight for an equal slice of the employment pie. But when high-school students were surveyed last year about the jobs they wanted after graduation, their answers corresponded closely to traditional gender stereotypes.

Among girls, the first choice, at 10.8 percent, was daycare provider/nursery-school teacher, followed by nurse (8%), teacher (5.8%), chef/pastry baker (4.8%), civil servant (4.6%), dog groomer (3.9%), beautician (3.5%), office worker (3.4%), hair stylist/makeup artist (3%) and pharmacist (3%).