Wage Gap Between Women And Men In Japan

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Introduction

According to the World Economic Forum’s 2021 Gender Gap Index, Japan ranks at 120 among 153 countries (World Economic Forum 2021). The empirical study that is done by Eden and Gupta in 2017 indicates that economically developed countries correlate with higher gender equality. The finding applies to the majority of the cases, though, the Japanese case refutes the result. Gender Gap Index, first introduced by the World Economic Forum in 2006, compares countries’ gender gaps based on the four dimensions: economic opportunities, education, health, and political leadership. One of the primary reasons that are contributing to Japan’s low ranking place on the Gender Gap Index is its large gender wage gap. In this paper, I will further explore what are the main socio-political factors that widen the gender wage gap and what are the potential solutions to narrow the large gender wage gap in Japan.

The crucial factors that contribute to the wide gender wage gap in Japan are as follows: a large number of female ‘Non-regular’ workers, changes in women’s postmarital employment, less appropriate work environment for mothers with young children, and fewer women in political and management positions. The solutions that I propose to tackle the wide gender wage gap in Japan are equalizing the proportion of college graduates majoring in science and engineering, increasing the childcare resources, and more participation of women in political and management positions.

A large number of ‘Non-regular’ female workers

As of 2020, the latest available year, the gender gap in median earnings for full-time employees in Japan is 22.5% (OECD 2020) which places Japan at third place among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development nations, surpassed only by Israel and South Korea. One of the major factors that widen the wage gap among men and women is that a large number of women are “non-regular” workers. An average hourly wage for regular employees is JPY1,937.2 (US$18), while the average for non-regular employees is only JPY1,228.8 (US$10.8) (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare 2014). Non-regular employee refers to when an employee’s “employment status” is set on the length of the labor contract (Kambayashi 2013). 37.4% of the workforce accounts for non-regular workers as of 2014 (Takahashi 2015). Regular employees, on the other hand, are workers that are employed on indefinite terms and have less chance to be fired. For employed women between ages 20–65, 53% of them are non-regular workers, whereas only 14.1% of men are in the non-regular category. This large proportion of women employed as non-regular workers contributes to 36 percent of the gender wage gap (Yamaguchi 2011).

Changes in women’s postmarital employment

For Japan, female participation in the labor force is 63% and when women have their first child, 70% of them cease to work for a decade or more (The Economist 2014). Sociologist and social demographer Wei-Hsin Yu has done research on why economic development has different effects on married women’s employment across societies. In her paper for Demography, she has analyzed the labor force exit patterns in Taiwan and Japan; two countries that have gone through significant economic development in the latter half of the 20th century. According to her result, women in high-status jobs were more likely to quit their jobs after marriage or giving birth due to those job positions being more demanding and incompatible with family life than the lower position jobs or public sector or blue-collar jobs. According to Yu’s research, Japanese management was likely to be more hostile toward married white-collar female employees than blue-collar working women. They generally presumed that the blue-collar women had working-class husbands and therefore that they “needed” to continue working for the family’s sake (Ogasawara 1998; Roberts 1994).

The less appropriate work environment for women with family or children

During the postwar period, Japan suffered from a major labor shortage problem (Brinton 1993; Cole 1971), therefore the Japanese employers had an incentive to maintain a “permanent employment system” (Cole 1971; Koike 1983). This system requires workers to remain with the same employer until retirement and it is highly incompatible with the women who have family or children. In Japanese work culture, the employees are required to work overtime or to join the work-related social activities after work. Work demands due to Japanese work culture make it difficult for women to stay in the workforce. If the work environment is incompatible with a woman’s family life, it will lead her to be discouraged to remain in the job after marriage and childbearing. The compatibility of the work environment will differ in labor demands, average firm size, and employment practices (Yu 1994).

Fewer women in management roles

Another major cause of the gender wage gap in Japan is few women in executive roles, especially management positions. This can be due to the lack of role models of female leadership, mentorship, and networking. Questionnaire surveys that are made by the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare explore the three main causes of women’s under-representation in management. The surveys were taken from the officers of firms where the women’s involvement in management or administration is less than 10%. According to the survey participants, the major causes for the low involvement of women in management were that “no women who have the necessary knowledge, experience or judgment capability” to be in the management; women lack sufficient years of service to become managers or administrators. To be promoted to a manager, long working hours are required for both genders. A study made by Kazuo Yamaguchi, a Japanese socialist at the University of Chicago, shows that depending on the age of their last child, the proportion of managers ‘increases for men and decreases for women’ and that the companies that promote work-life balance among workers have smaller gender gaps in the proportion of female managers (Yamaguchi 2011).

Solutions

There are far more contributing factors to the gender wage gap in Japan and I have only mentioned a few of the significant factors that I have found promising in this paper. As there are many reasons and factors for the wide gender wage gap, there are countless solutions as well. The most promising solutions that can influence the gender wage gap more widely are equalizing the proportion of college graduates majoring in science and engineering. Among STEM fields, the proportion of female students in natural sciences, mathematics, and statistics at the university education level in Japan is at 27%, which is far below the global average of 52%, according to the OECD’s Education at a Glance 2021 report. It is crucial for more female students studying STEM because STEM positions often pay wages far above the national average. More female workers being in high-paid positions will result in a significant improvement in the unbalanced gender wage gap. Second, increasing child care resources will improve the gender wage gap in Japan. As mentioned before, 70% of the female workforce leaves their job temporarily or impermanently after giving birth to the first child. One of the primary reasons for that phenomenon would be the lack of daycare care facilities in Japan. According to the New York Times, at least ‘20,000’ children are on the waiting list of public daycares. Improving the availability of the daycare will help numerous families with both of the parents working. Lastly, more participation of women in political and management positions would help narrow the wide wage gap in Japan. Since there are fewer women representing women in Japanese politics, women’s voices are not heard in politics. More women’s involvement in politics means the wide range of policy issues that would advance the work environment for women will be issued. Also, it is crucial for women to be in higher positions at work because the main factor which contributes to the large wage gap among the working males and females in Japan is the majority of working women being in low-paid positions.

Conclusion

In this short paper, I have attempted to write about the prominent factors that are influencing the wide gender wage gap in Japan. In conclusion, there are countless factors, and most of the major factors are tied with the fact that women are in lower-paid jobs. However, this phenomenon is only the tip of the iceberg. Japan has a long way to go to narrow its wage gender gap but it is never too late to start taking drastic actions.

Works Cited

• Eden, Lorraine, and Susan Forquer Gupta. “Culture and context matter: gender in international business and management.” Cross-Cultural & Strategic Management, vol. 24, no. 2, 2017, pp. 194–210.
• “Japanese women and work Holding back half the nation.” The Economist, 29 March 2014, https://www.economist.com/briefing/2014/03/29/holding-back-half-the-nation. Accessed 15 December 2021.
• Kambayashi, Ryo. “Differences in Definitions of Non-Regular Employees in Government Statistics.” Japan Labor Review, vol. 10, no. 4, 2013, pp. 55–66.
• OECD. “Earnings and wages — Gender wage gap.” OECD Data, https://data.oecd.org/earnwage/gender-wage-gap.htm.
• Takahashi, Koji. “The Work and Lives of Japanese Non-Regular Workers in the “Mid-Prime-Age” Bracket (Age 35–44).” Japan Labor Review, vol. 12, no. 3, 2015, pp. 100–123.
• World Economic Forum. “Global Gender Gap Report 2021.” 2021, p. 404. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2021.pdf.
• Yamaguchi, Kazuo. “Decomposition of Inequality Among Groups by Counterfactual Modeling: An Analysis of the Gender Wage Gap in Japan.” Sociological Methodology, vol. 41, American Sociological Association, 2011, pp. 223–255.
• Yu, Wei-Hsin. “Changes in Women’s Postmarital Employment in Japan and Taiwan.” Demography, vol. 42, no. 4, 2005, pp. 693–717.
• Zhang, Yingying Zhang, and Naoko Kumagai. “IRI Joint Research Series.” Women in the workplace: Insights form Japan, 2020. https://www.iuj.ac.jp/research/outputs/pdf/IRI_2020_02.pdf.