Kyariaūman

A kyariaūman (キャリアウーマン) is a Japanese term for a career woman. She is 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."

The term is used in Japan to describe the counterpart to the Japanese salaryman (サラリーマン); she is a woman who works for a salary. She seeks to supplement their family's income through work or to remain independent by seeking a career as a working woman.

In Japan, women were thought to have a special gift for communicating with the divine. The Japanese sun deity, Amaterasu, was female and central to the idea that women were specially gifted. Due to this idea, prior to the beginning of the Muromachi period (1336) Japan was a matriarchal society. Following the Muromachi age and well into the late 1800s, women still received equal treatment compared to men in many areas. They were granted freedom of marriage, love, and equal treatment in regards to work, as they worked under much the same conditions as men. Women of the elite classes, however, were bound by a newly reformed version of Shinto, with heavy influences of Confucianism. Under the Confucian ethic of "three obediences" women were expected to show subservience to their fathers as girls, to their husbands as wives, and to their children in old age. This began the traditional Japanese image of the "Good Wife, Wise Mother" in which women were supposed to remain as housewives after marriage, caring for the household, cooking, sewing, and being subservient to their husbands. This, however, only proved a problem for women in the working world during the Meiji era (1868–1912). Despite class distinctions being abolished, Confucian ethics had penetrated into the culture, robbing women of most of their equal status. Women on farmlands still maintained some level of freedom with work, tending the fields with their husbands and children, however, throughout the modernization of Japan, women were denied many of their rights, including the right to work in jobs filled primarily by men, to be paid comparably, and to work in a system that rewarded talent over seniority and sex.

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