combining working life and family life needs to be further developed and companies need to rethink their employment and career models as well as working hours active labour market programmes tend to focus on lone mothers who get stronger support to reenter the labour market than married women only if japan makes big efforts in the abovementioned areas will it be possible to significantly increase the utilisation of the female labour force in more productive workplaces new policy orientations tackle the problem of nonregular workers freeters are one target group and the government is promoting the conversion of temporary and other types of precarious jobs into more stable employment