As I made the comparison between the differences between the workplace diversity landscape in Europe versus that in the United States and then began to draw the comparison between the picture of Diversity which I was looking at in Japan in comparison to anything I had ever experienced. Indeed, as I saw a time lag between implementation within Europe when compared to the United States and I saw time lag in Japan. However I could not even begin to focus on implementation but more on awareness and the path to implementation had not even been laid as yet.
With the management teams and decision makers being dominated by men largely set in their ways I saw many challenges up ahead. The first challenge was in educating the management team and workforce about Diversity, about the fact that their were different ways of doing things and also that men didn’t always have all the answers.
I was frequently surprised as I moved around the company I was working for at the time and; also in meeting other women from some of the other traditional Japanese companies professionally and socially how much talent was being laid to waste. I would meet women with degrees from universities here in the United Kingdom and also in the United States with excellent command of the English language who were working as secretaries. Even more surprising to me at the time was the fact that this was accepted and that they assumed and thought that that was they way that things were.
I will be ending this particular post with a couple more paragraphs in a few days time – thanks for reading and as always, let me know how I can be of assistance to you.
-Stephen C
