When All Assistants Are Women, Are All Women Assistants? Gender Inequality and the Gender Composition of Support Roles

Hilary J. Holbrow

doi:10.7758/RSF.2022.8.7.02

Article Information

vol. 8 no. 7 28-47

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2022.8.7.02

Published By

RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences

Print ISSN

2377-8253

Online ISSN

2377-8261

History

Published online November 29, 2022.

© 2022 Russell Sage Foundation. Holbrow, Hilary J. 2022. “When All Assistants Are Women, Are All Women Assistants? Gender Inequality and the Gender Composition of Support Roles.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 8(7): 28–47. DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2022.8.7.02. The author gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Fulbright Foundation as well the invaluable introductions provided by Akinari Horii and Jun Kurihara at the Canon Institute for Global Studies (CIGS), and by Shinju Fujihira at Harvard. This research would not have been possible without them and the support of numerous staff at the Canon Institute, the Japan Association of Corporate Executives (JACE), and the companies that participated in the survey. I am particularly indebted to Yasuko Nagatsuka of CIGS, Natsuko Kasahara of JACE, and to Keiko Shibatani. Their intelligence and professionalism brought the project from idea to reality. Hazel Markus, Suzanne Nichols, Cecilia Ridgeway, Jocelyn Viterna, the Russell Sage Foundation conference participants, and the anonymous reviewers provided insightful feedback. Direct correspondence to: Hilary Holbrow, at hilholbr@iu.edu, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, Indiana University, 355 N. Eagleson Ave., Bloomington, IN 47405, United States. Open Access Policy: RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences is an open access journal. This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.