Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal

Small Employers and he Health Insurance Needs of Employees with High Health Care Costs: A Need for Better Models

By
Ann Hilton Fisher

Abstract

American advocates of family caregivers believe that the elimination of the maternal wall requires fundamentally that the norms for the ideal worker be changed. The author finds that this belief coincides with the belief of advocates of family caregivers in Japan, another industrialized country that has faced the same problem of the maternal wall. Yet, demographic and cultural factors within the two countries have produced contrasting definitions of the very problem itself, and thus different ideas about what measures are appropriate to solve it. The author contrasts the two disparate approaches to the maternal wall, identifying the American approach as the anti-discrimination approach, and the Japanese approach as the institutional change-through-legislation approach. Arguing that the issue of the maternal wall is not solely about discrimination resulting from bias against workers with caregiving responsibilities, nor is solely about disadvantages such workers experience resulting from paid work as an institution formed primarily around men's bodies and life patterns, the author calls upon both Japanese and American advocates to begin dialogue with one another, with the goal of combining the two approaches to enhance the possibility of effectively eliminating the maternal wall.