Active agency under constraint: Labour mobility and gendered strategies of Japanese women in dual-career marriages

This article investigates how highly skilled Japanese women in dual-career marriages navigate labour mobility in transnational contexts, focusing on career continuity, domestic responsibilities, and institutional constraints shaped by Japan’s enduring gender regime. Drawing on Connell’s theory of gender and power and the concept of mobility capital, the study analyses the career strategies of women who have relocated abroad as part of family migration. While Japan’s corporate and social structures continue to reproduce a male breadwinner/female caregiver model, international mobility opens spaces for renegotiating these norms. Based on qualitative data, the article identifies three strategic patterns: parallel careers, career sabbaticals, and entrepreneurial self-employment. Across these models, mobility capital – defined as the capacity to access, appropriate, and convert transnational experiences – emerges as a key resource enabling women to mitigate disruptions, sustain employability, and negotiate more equitable gendered arrangements. In particular, relocation to more gender-inclusive contexts, such as Switzerland, facilitated shifts in domestic labour division and professional reinvention. By foregrounding the interplay between mobility, gender, and institutional structures, the article contributes to scholarship on labour mobility from Japan, highlighting how transnational movement functions not only as a constraint but also as a resource in reshaping gendered career trajectories.