Jean R Renshaw.

Jean R Renshaw. recent York: Oxford University Press, 1999 291 pp $3500

Kimono in the Boardroom is based upon Renshaw's interviews with over 150 prosperous women in Japan. The primary goal of the work is to illustrate that women are not alone present in Japanese organizations still that they are also subtly redefining the landscape of Japanese business. To achieve this goal, Renshaw draws forward sociology, employment law, economics, anthropology, religion, psychology and history to portray a picture of the contemporary Japanese businesswoman-her experiences, her challenges, and her indigences for the future. The picture Renshaw sketches is given the one and the other depth and color through the cites and life experiences of the professional women she interviewed.

The work has twelve chapters, organized into three sections with loosely have relationed themes. While not a stated goal of the volume Kimono in the Boardroom provides an admirable compilation of comparisons between American and Japanese cultivation gender-equality challenges, affirmative action laws, etc completely through the book, which makes this a contribution to comparative diversity research. The first chapter propounds a statistical description of Japanese women in business compared with American women in business. The next to the first chapter describes the demographic characteristics of the Japanese women interviewed and a certain number of of their professional experiences. Based forward observation of the patterns reported, Renshaw draws one interesting (if not theoretically based) observations. forward page 52, for example, she decides that, the importance of birth order "became apparent [when it consistently appeared that] the majority of the lucky women managers grew up without older brothers." Departing from the first pair chapters in t his section, the third chapter proffers a very brief summary of Japan's history, mythology, and religion. Renshaw uses these summaries as a foundation for the creation of today's perceptions of and policies toward Japanese professional women

The other section of this book includes chapters 4 by means of 7. These chapters detail the refinement of Japanese organizations, the various paths to succes her interviewees have taken, and the challenges preventing Japanese women from achieving succes Given that these chapters include many repeats from the women Renshaw interviewed, it is important to clarify who they are. While the subtitle of this part suggests that the women interviewed were traditional corporate managers in Japanese organizations, they are actually self-same diverse women with successful careers, broadly defined. They restrain a wide variety of titles and appear to run the gamut in period of times of positions, from lower-level corporate women to entrepreneur and individual contributors, and they range in age from 20 to athwart 50. Given that Renshaw has interviewed an superior representation of successful professional Japanese women this work may have greater generalizability than the title suggests

The third and last section of Kimono in the Boardroom, including chapters 8 between the walls of 12, describes the current state and predicts the futurity state of women in Japanese business. In chapters 8 and 9 Renshaw presents very useful categorizations for researchers to help understand the astute differences among Japanese businesses. Chapter 8 categorizes the various emblems of female-owned businesses, based in succession the way the women rose to power, and chapter 9 categorizes the organizational agricultures of Japanese businesses, based loosely onward their receptivity to female managers. Chapter 10 among other topics, screens the state of Japanese affirmative action laws, using the United States as the point of comparison.

Turning to the futurity chapters 11 and 12 examine the part of men in the Japanese family and the changes wanted in traditional Japanese business to become more receptive to female managers. the pair chapters have the overarching goal to polished the path for Japanese women with professional career aspirations. In chapter 11 Renshaw describes the Japanese male psyche and uses many examples from popular civilization to show that there is an evolution toward greater sex equality among the younger generation. While compelling, and hopeful for Japanese women the sources indicating this cultural shift range from Japanese television commercials to commentaries written by way of Japanese psychiatrists. In parallel, chapter 12 presents the same hope for a cultural shift toward sex equality within Japanese organizations. If real, a sociological exploration of this cultural shift will likely be the subdue of many future books.

Renshaw be seens to have written Kimono in the Boardroom to illustrate the compelling story of female Japanese managers today. In many ways, the part unfolds as a composite biographical draught toggling between ancient Japan and fresh organizational challenges. While interesting to read, the mode of expression contributes to the shortcoming of the volume The interview-based research does not have a hearty theoretical base. Rather, the interviewees' experiences contribute to to illustrate Renshaw's personal interpretation of the state of professional Japanese women This shortcoming will resonate more with academic readers than with practitioners. While lacking in rigor, the couple academics and practitioners alike should nevertheless find the main division interesting and very revealing. Renshaw does achieve her goal in making prosperous professional Japanese women highly visible to the business community.

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