NHK's The Employee Tackles Gender Bias in Japanese Workplaces

A new Japanese drama series, The Employee, is examining gender stereotypes and the challenges women face in male-dominated workplaces. Produced by public broadcaster NHK, the series explores the pressures women experience as they pursue career advancement, particularly the conflicting expectations surrounding ambition, leadership and workplace behavior.

The series was launched recently and has sparked discussions in Japan about the "double bind" faced by professional women. Akiko Ueda, a senior producer in NHK's content production team, told Deadline that the drama examines how women can be expected to demonstrate professional ability and ambition while simultaneously being discouraged from expressing these qualities too strongly.

The second Japanese drama to come out of NHK's Writers' Development Room (WDR), which aims to nurture new writers, The Employee stars Yoh Yoshida and Sara Minami. The previous production, 30,000,000 Yen, was popular for its quick plot and unconventional story.

Key Highlights:

• Japanese drama The Employee challenges gender stereotypes and workplace inequalities faced by women
• Starring Yoh Yoshida and Sara Minami, the series follows a 50-year-old professional navigating a male-dominated corporate environment
• Produced by NHK, the drama explores workplace harassment, gender dynamics and women's professional identity

The narrative of the drama tells of Eriko, a 50-year-old professional, who wants to get on to her company's board. She has spent many years pursuing a career in the corporate world, where she feels she has been able to achieve success, and she thinks that will be beneficial when she becomes a leader of a large project. Just before the project starts, though, she receives a threatening letter she doesn't recognize, threatening her career and the organization that she's dedicated her life to.

The main theme of the series, Akiko said, was whether people who have taken on an organization's values can overcome those values. The production's goal is to depict a woman whose identity as a professional has been formed by the expectations placed on her in the workplace who then confronts the system to assert her identity.

The series also deals with more general issues in the workplace, such as harassment, gender, power dynamics in organizations and the difference between corporate and personal responsibility. Akiko said he admired Yoshida's acting in the role of Eriko, who is "between corporate expectations and personal values. Her character Ruri makes the story even more complicated due to her fragility and impact on Eriko's life.

The project started with the idea of a group of mothers linked together by their children's community. Later the writers moved the setting to a corporate environment where they examined the nature of relationships, institutional structure and power in the workplace.

The series is written by Tomomi Naka, Shu Matsui, Tomoe Asaka and Sou Tateya and directed by Keita Hosaka, Keisuke Oshima and Yuki Nishio. The Employee's characters and workplace story is designed to foster discussion of the role of women in their workplace, equality, and their expectations of women.