著者

磯貝 恵美子

出版者

三重大学

巻号頁・発行日

2014-01-01

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A typical problem of the Japanese society is the role of women, especially in industrial business field. The actual conditions of female engineers in an automotive company are not well specified in automobile-related companies in Japan. Only low proportion of female engineers and female managers can be found in leading Japanese companies. In this thesis, support actions are proposed to assist female engineers to build their career in equal manner than men do. The results of this research are expected to improve the equality of female engineers and managers compared to their male counterparts. Eventually, these actions aim at enlarging the diversity, and lead the company to more innovations by new ways of engineering. To determine the actual conditions and problems of the career development I compared female engineers with respect to other female staffs in one company by performing a questionnaire survey. This survey included 37 questions and the range of the 115 respondents' age was 20 to 50 years old. As a result, it was found out that the female engineers are satisfied with in-company systems for career formation, but that they are not satisfied with the work-life balance and respect by or support of their bosses. Also, there were the needs in increased recognition and acceptance off female engineers and would appreciate social events carried out by female engineers. Moreover, in the survey it was found that 75% of the female engineers and 65% of the other female staffs had problems to continue their careers. 70% of the female engineers and 85% of other female staffs had difficulties in taking good care of their children. Furthermore, to understand in detail the disadvantageous factors in female’s career planning process, an additional, more detailed analysis was prepared that covered aspects like job continuity and parallel processing of job and child care. I analyzed the consciousness of female engineers using statistical methods like correlation coefficients between their worries and job position, age and family structure. As an intermediate result, the degree of satisfaction in business life is different from each condition such as worksite accessibility, responsibilities for housekeeping, role models, which are affected by the type of work, age and family structure. A framework is needed for improved female career planning in the future. The following proposed framework consists of three support actions that are developed in this thesis. The actions focus on the areas of age, family structure and the type of work, i.e. engineer or clerical staff.1. Social relationship: Plan social events of female engineers and carry out lectures led by the female leaders to support creation of human networks among the female engineers.2. Use of IT:Provide websites and weblogs (blogs) to share personal experiences about the job continuity and how engineers can keep job and child care inbalance.3. Mentor system: Provide a consultation system showing the role model of female engineers where young female engineers can consult senior female engineers and they can talk about their experiences and advises. The effect of this framework is expected to improve the motivation of female engineers to continue their work with satisfaction and to create their career of their desire. If these actions are carefully implemented by Japanese companies, they will benefit from highly motivated female staff. As this thesis analyzed the specific urgent needs of female engineers, the proposed actions are expected to lead especially automotive companies to new innovative products, by influences of female engineers’ creativity. Such a change will also have an impact on other industrial companies and I hope that this thesis will make a great contribution to more equal distribution of roles.