MOVING ON TO CHANGING WEEKEND DATES
Many westerners, too, are not really aware that over recent decades, around the globe different countries have been changing their work-weeks and work calendars as part of a process of globalization. That was, for example, what occurred as I was living in Kuwait 4 years ago. At that time, the country reestablished its weekend from Thursdays and Fridays. An created a new weekend starting on Fridays and ending Saturday night.
This change was undertaken so that 4 work-week-days in Kuwait coincided with the Western 5-day work week. This meant, following the change of the weekend in Kuwait, that approximately 80% of the time the stock and oil markets around the world would coincide during the same week (instead of only 60% of the time) as had occurred in the decades prior to this.
Because of religious reasons, the country of Kuwait was not willing to give up taking Fridays off. Interestingly, the state of Israel also runs on that same 7 day cycle--with many Jews closing their shops--and professionals taking off--on Fridays and Saturdays, too.
It is important to note that in most of the less developed corners of the globe, , unlike in the West--which became clearly adhered to the Gregorian calendar and the 5-day work week quicker than many of the more traditional parts of the planet, many Asians and Africans peoples had never really had developed an affinity for or a tradition of "taking more than a half-day or single day off every 7 to 10 days".
This imbalance in relationship to work had alarmed the Western countries as Asian states began to catch up with the West developmentally two decades ago. It is one reason that the United States foreign officials complained to the Japanese ministries in the early 1980s. They specifically asked the Japanese nation and its people to take more days off each week --and go on more holidays.
NOTE: When I was working in Japan in the early 1990s, the school system included a 5 1/2 or 6 day-school week and until that time many Japanese had had a 6-day workweek. The government of Japan acquiesced to the outside pressure (known as gaiatsu) to "internationalize" its economy. IThe government pushed to have more workers take more time off--and for more students to stay home on Saturdays playing--rather than studying. Similarly, in the mid-1990s, Western hegemonic globalizing pressures soon persuaded the 4 Little Tigers of the Asian economy (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong) later.
Meanwhile, in other less-developed Asian states, the trend seems to continue to be one of tradition--whereby the worker works as many days as possible each week--i.e. without much regard to taking any particular day off each week. This is likely to due more to poverty than due to culture. However, since the farmer-like mentality of living in and near ones work and shop is very common in less developed parts of the globe, society and culture do have influence on the norms of society--and those norms are related to which days in a week or month one works and when one tries to rest.
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