New crowdsourced jobs site helps Japanese mothers get some income without joining the rat race

Japan is the worst developed country for working mothers as horrendous working hours combine with a culture that expects stay-at-home moms to stay home forever. That makes it tough for women with kids to get back into the workplace.

Japanese web company CyberAgent (TYO:4751) has launched an online, crowdsourced jobs marketplace that allows these women to pick up small jobs and paid tasks as and when they have time. It’s called Mama and Crowd.

(See: Why this startup is better off in Tokyo than in Silicon Valley)The Mama and Crowd site first opened in beta in December, CNET Japan reports, before opening to the public earlier this month. Towards the end of its beta testing it already had 50,000 users.

There are lots of online marketplaces out there for finding people to do specific work, but those are usually focused on recruiting people like web developers or graphic designers. Mama and Crowd breaks the mold with a new target audience, and gives them a legitimate and safe marketplace to browse for work – instead of risking all those awful ‘work from home’ adverts and scams that litter the internet.

(Source: CNET Japan, via The Bridge)