On Monday, January 27, the Hamilton Lugar School’s 21st Century Japan Politics and Society Initiative (21JPSI) launched the Spring 2025 iteration of its multidisciplinary “Japan Politics and Society” speaker series with a public lecture by Indiana University’s own Hilary Holbrow. Dr. Holbrow is a sociologist and assistant professor in HLS’ East Asian Languages and Cultures Department, where her research focuses on economic inequality, work and organization, and immigration, among other topics.
As a testament to the degree of interest in the topic of Prof. Holbrow’s remarks (“Flexibility Stigma & Gender Inequality in Japan”), a capacity crowd of 60 students, faculty, staff, and community members gathered in Ferguson International Center to hear her present her latest research.
Prof. Holbrow kicked off her remarks by noting that, in an era of below-replacement birthrates and population aging, keeping people in the workforce through parenthood and through health challenges is an issue of increasing concern to policymakers in many countries. This is especially true in rapidly aging Japan, which currently faces its longest labor shortage on record. Although many governments have developed parental and sick leave policies designed to mitigate the impact of these interruptions to paid work, Holbrow noted that the “flexibility stigma”—a belief that workers who use flexible workplace policies are less valuable and deserving than other employees—threatens to stymy these well-intentioned policies. This stigma can not only make workers less eager to take advantage of available leave opportunities, it can also result in those employees who do take leave “overcompensating” and/or “burning out” upon their return to the office.
Prof. Holbrow’s original survey experiment, conducted in a “real-world context” within four elite Japanese firms, was designed to test how likely respondents would be to recommend different (hypothetical) employees for promotions. It generated several important results. First, respondents recommended promotion equally—regardless of gender—for those employees who did not take leave. Second, there was an extremely high penalty for employees who took sick leave; but it, too, was largely gender neutral. Third, although parental leave was not as severely stigmatized as sick leave, respondents penalized women who took it significantly more than men.
Overall, Holbrow’s findings did not support the idea that men are punished more for taking leave than women are, but did support the idea that female employees face a “motherhood penalty.” Thus, despite men’s concerns about the impact of flexibility stigma on their careers, women remain doubly disadvantaged by the flexibility stigma. Not only are they more likely to take leave, but when they do, coworkers judge them more harshly.
In closing, Holbrow acknowledged the many years of efforts by Japan’s government to implement policies intended to make leave more flexible and attractive. However, her research shows that the effect of this “flexibility stigma” significantly reduces these policies’ efficacy as both a short- and long-term solution for Japan’s labor shortage and declining population.
Following the lecture, Dr. Holbrow engaged with the audience and answered a series of questions from students and faculty.
For more information about 21JPSI, please see https://jpsi.indiana.edu/. To be informed about 21JPSI’s future public events, please sign up for our event announcement mailing list.