It was common that women stop working to go into a home and to concentrate on housekeeping or child-rearing when they get married or have a child till a decade ago in Japan
However, these days, it is becoming the present condition that not resigning work continuously even if woman carries out marriage or returning to work when her child comes to leave a hand in an advances to society, and a woman as well as a male commits it. However, the woman cannot be working on the same conditions as a man in practice.
The rate of the Japanese woman’s employment rate which the woman by investigation of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development who received education above the high school graduate attaches to work was the 29th place among 30 nations of member nations. That is, even if there is school education, an opportunity to employ efficiently in society is not enough. Moreover, probably, it is the causes that man and woman’s salary has a gap or that the social consciousness of resigning work if marriage is carried out is also deep-rooted.
Moreover, “Man is out and woman is in the house”, in other words, the fixed idea that a man works at the office and woman does housekeeping still remains. So woman has many burdens also in the society of the present age when the woman advanced in society.
It is necessary to advance environmental management which can demonstrate female capability as a measure against future, and it is required for it to build the environment where equipment of compatible employment environment and reemployment tend to carry out work and child-rearing.
by Ayaka Hori
JAPANsociology 
I also think it is very big problem that Japan is still very male dominant country. Even if there are some polices to eliminate the gender discrimination in working place, it does little effect on the situation of women in working place. For example, it is still common that women have child-care leave even if both men and women can have it. As you mentioned, there is still very fixed gender norm in Japanese society. Unless we cannot change our gender norm, it is difficult to solve this problem. Therefore, it is more valuable to try to eliminate such fixed gender norm like by having education on gender in school not just making polices to support women.
Moreover, with a population that is getting older, Japan is in need for more people working!
One solution would be to raise the rate of immigrants coming to Japan, therefore to ease the conditions under which one can live and work in this country. However, as Japan’s society is very homogen until now, I believe Japanese people are not ready to open up to forgeigners making themselves steady here, as they bring an unknown culture, behavior, point of view and food with them.
So why not support women to go back to work? After all, Japanese women have one of the highest education in the world and the cost the state a lot of money.