A career woman (キャリアウーマン, kyariaūman?) sometimes career girl, is a Japanese term for a Japanese woman, married or not, who pursues a career to make a living and for personal advancement, rather than being a housewife without occupation outside the home. The term came into use when women were expected to marry and become housewives after a short period working as an "office lady".
"Career woman" is used in Japan to describe the counterpart to the Japanese salaryman (サラリーマン); i.e., a woman who works for a salaried living. These Japanese women seek to either supplement their family's income through work or to remain independent by seeking a career as a working woman. These women want to break out of the confines of being a homemaker in a Japanese home, determined to win independence by way of their own skills and strengths, believing personal economic stability as the best way to earn their freedom.
Read more about Career Woman: Recent Times, "Women Friendly", Stereotypes
Famous quotes containing the words career and/or woman:
“Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“Before any woman is a wife, a sister or a mother she is a human being. We ask nothing as women but everything as human beings.”
—Ida C. Hultin, U.S. minister and suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 17, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)