As the protracted economic slump prompts companies to shed the time-honored practices of lifetime employment and seniority-based wages, another victim of the cost-cutting ax is the two-track hiring system that has effectively kept women's wages lower than men's.

But instead of raising the status of women with the phaseout of the contentious practice, which has been criticized for fostering sexual discrimination, experts believe women may find it harder to hold full-time jobs, because the lower-level positions they have dominated will increasingly be filled by part-time and temporary workers.

The two-track system includes a management fast track and a slow path for routine, clerical work. Although both are ostensibly open to both sexes, men have dominated the fast track while women are usually found in the subordinate path.