Office lady
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Office_lady".

An office lady, often abbreviated OL (Japanese: オーエル Ōeru), is a female office worker in Japan who performs generally pink collar tasks such as serving tea and secretarial or clerical work. Like many unmarried Japanese, OLs often live with their parents well into early adulthood. Office ladies are usually full-time permanent staff, although the jobs they do usually have little opportunity for promotion, and there is usually the tacit expectation that they leave their jobs once they get married.

Due to some Japanese pop culture influence in Hong Kong, the term is also in common usage there.

History

The rise in OLs began after World War II, as offices expanded. They were first known as "BGs" (for Business Girls), but it was later found that English-speakers used a similar acronym, B-girls, to refer to "Bar girls", or prostitutes. Josei Jishin, a women's magazine, ran a competition to find a better name for the business girls. OL was chosen in 1963 from the entries.¹

In the 1980s, being an OL was the most common job for Japanese women, and OLs made up approximately one-third of the female work force.¹

In fiction

OL stock characters are frequently found in josei manga and anime, often portrayed as attractive, clever, and wistful individuals bored with their jobs, over-pressured by their families, and facing psychological issues.

• The Shomuni franchise includes manga, television series and films about office ladies.
• The manga and anime series Oruchuban Ebichu, for example, features an office lady character appropriately named OL.
• The warrior characters Linna Yamazaki (Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040) and Arisa and Kyouko (All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku) have day jobs as office ladies.
• Most major characters in OL Shinkaron are office ladies.
• Re: Cutey Honey has Honey using her OL job as a way to disappear from work without being noticed.

See also

• Salaryman, the male equivalent of office lady.

References

Further reading

Ogasawara, Yuko. Office Ladies and Salaried Men: Power, Gender, and Work in Japanese Companies. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1998. Netlibrary link.

External links

• The Office Lady in Japan by Jean Forrest (nonfiction feminist essay)