Corporate Transfers for Dual-Career Couples: From Gendered Tenkin to Gender-Equal Negotiations?

Abstract

This qualitative-research-based article discusses corporate transfers of dual-career couples in large Japanese firms. In Japan’s internal labour market, inter-regional transfers, or tenkin, are de rigueur in many companies for purposes of training and promotion of long-term employees. Their implementation is often taken for granted because of the gendered assumption that only men are subject to tenkin. Women, who take responsibility in domestic roles, are not able to accept tenkin. Rather, they are either exempted from tenkin regardless of their wishes or forced to remain in secondary positions that require no tenkin. This gendered division of labour in tenkin has hampered women’s promotion in Japanese workplaces and hindered dual-career couples from achieving dual careers through tenkin. Using Acker’s (1990) theory of gendered organisations and Nemoto’s (2016) study of gendered practices in Japanese firms, this article elucidates the processes by which these cultural, gendered corporate transfers (a) reproduce gendered organisations, (b) are changing from dictates to negotiations in some companies where female workers are given more opportunities alongside intensification of the firms’ global competition, but (c) nevertheless continue to be in tension with dual-career families in contemporary Japan. To make a dual-career-couple model mainstream, the labour market structure that views corporate transfers as an absolute necessity needs radical change.