Josei drama and Japanese television’s ‘new woman’

Recent advances in Japanese legislation purport to make the workplace more welcoming for career women. However, while women’s roles have progressed significantly since the implementation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Law (EEOL), recent televisual representations of single working women in Japan demonstrate that the issue of women’s roles in the workplace remains highly contentious. The conflicting messages in these programmes may, in fact, have a regressive effect on the reception of women in the Japanese workplace.