Features of Women’s Leadership and Nursing in Japanese Culture

Abstract

Mutual respect and harmonious relationships between people can be viewed as the fundamental spirit of Japanese culture. Japanese leaders try to keep the peace in human relations, rather than to achieve a goal. They become leaders due to internal and external conditions, rather than their own abilities. Japanese society has been basically male-dominated though the ratio of women leaders has increased recently. Higher education and development of academic societies in nursing have been very successful during the last two decades and nursing is one of the most trusted professions in Japan. However, some Japanese people still think a nurse is just an assistant to doctors. The purpose of this paper is to clarify features of women’s leadership in Japan from the nursing point of view. In Japanese culture, leaders need to possess human resource leadership as an indispensable element, while good leaders may have advantages in all four frames of leadership including structural, human resource, political, and symbolic frames. Japanese organizations are also supported by excellent followership which might be influenced by the structure of Japanese society which is called “the vertical society” where leaders are fostered from among followers. What is important in Japanese leadership is to have a vision that leadership leads to the happiness of all people in a shareable form.

Developing and validating the Japanese version of professional attitude scale for nurses

“…For example, while autonomy is a key element in nursing, it is still limited for nurses by physician-led medical systems and organizational supervision. Nurses' low status is perceived to be associated with the similarly low societal status of women (Crisp & Iro, 2018), which is consistent with the context within Japan (Sakashita 2018). Japan's overall ranking in the 2018 Global Gender Gap Report was 110th out of 149 countries, and women's enrolment in tertiary education and participation in the professional/technical workforce also ranked outside the top 100 countries (World Economic Forum 2018).…”

In Search of a Professional Identity: An Analysis of Photographic and Illustrative Images of Nurses in Japan.

“…This does reflect the reality that women constitute the majority of Japan's nurses: in 2018, male nurses accounted for only 7.8% of the total nursing workforce (Ministry of Health Labour and Welfare, 2019). Linguistically the word for nursing was gendered: it was as late as 2001 that the name for nursing in Japanese changed from kangofu (nursing woman) to kangoshi (nurse), a gender-neutral term (Sakashita, 2018). Although the sparse representation of male nurses in photographs and illustrations may represent the reality, it also reinforces a stereotype of nurses as female and may discourage men from considering nursing as a career choice.…”