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Originally Posted by Nyororin
The thing is, any woman who works in an office is called an OL.
The head programmer at my husband`s company, a woman, calls herself an OL. It basically ends up meaning business woman. The female counterpart to a salary man.
It`s a nondescript term for white collar employment. There isn`t really any stigma attached to it.
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So this Wikipedia article is wrong?
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An office lady, often abbreviated OL (Japanese: オーエル Ōeru), is a female office worker in Japan who performs generally white collar (or, some would say, 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.
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-girl, 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]
The OL phenomenon is changing as more and more Japanese women pursue higher education, especially abroad. Additionally, more businesses are being started by female entrepreneurs, who may be choosing to strike out on their own to seek an alternative to the traditional, conservative, male-dominated atmosphere of established businesses.
OL stock characters are frequently found in josei manga and anime, often portrayed as clever and wistful individuals bored with their jobs, overpressured by their families, and facing psychological issues, though they are usually attractive. The manga and anime series Ebichu, for example, features an office lady character, appropriately named OL, while the warrior characters Linna Yamazaki from Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040 and Arisa and Kyouko from All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku have day jobs as office ladies. Most major characters in OL Shinkaron are office ladies.
Office lady - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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