OL Office Lady Japanese Culture OL lady travel app and magazine

Office Lady or OL is a very unique Japanese business culture. Office Lady is a vocabulary created by a female editor of a Japanese magazine tailored to women, describes Japanese business women, and more specifically female Japanese office workers or white collar workers. For example, a female legal assistant at a law firm is an office lady. It's not really a positive word. For example, many legal assistants in Japan are housewives turned office ladies. They don't hold the most powerful positions nor the highest salaries. The top lawyers are still mostly male. It's still the case that male coworkers often get promoted to better positions and hold higher salaries. Make no mistake, these newly minted middle class workers are heavy spenders and command a lot of financial power. There are now iPhone Apps and magazines catered to single office lady travel, covering office lady friendly activities and destinations. Once upon a time, they were also known to be heavy handed stock investors. They use their spare time to tackle stock investments and even invest in US stocks. It's not uncommon for females to control the finance of a Japanese household. In certain sense, they have all the power to make household financial decisions, that includes any daily purchases.