September 25, 2022

Akahata editorial (excerpts)

A government program obliging companies to disclose their wage gaps between male and female employees launched in July, targeting 17,650 firms hiring more than 301 regular employees. Under the program, targeted-companies have to make public their pay gap data by the end of June 2023.

The Labor Standards Act prohibits discriminatory treatment of women with regard to wages because they are women. Despite this provision, women working full-time earn 70% of what men earn, and only earn 40% compared to men for non-regular women workers who account for more than half of all working women. In the background lies forms of indirect discrimination. Companies often claim that women prefer being on a support-staff track and working as non-regular workers rather than developing their careers and being promoted to a higher position, and thus justify gender discrimination in wages and promotion.

The establishment of the program mandating corporations to publish their pay gap information came about thanks to in part the protracted struggles waged by unions and concerned citizens as well as through Diet efforts of the Japanese Communist Party.

The mandatory publication policy, however, has room for improvement. It should require corporations to announce the percentages of male and female non-regular workers’ wages to full-time male workers’ wages, respectively, as wage differences between regular and non-regular workers are directly relevant to male-female disparities in wages. The scope of companies targeted by the program should be expanded at least to those with more than 100 employees because half of all women workers are working at companies with less than 300 employees.

In addition to the thorough reporting of pay gap information, it is vital to introduce a system that will push companies to draw up and carry out a plan to reduce the gender pay gap. In France, for example, the government has introduced a legal framework under which firms will face fines if they ignore the government warning regarding neglect of their publication duties. As a result, this year, 85% of companies hiring more than 1,000 workers submitted the gender pay gap report. The EU Commission’s wage transparency directive also calls for setting an effective level of fines for violations of the directive.

The urgent need is for Japan to establish a supervising mechanism which includes the imposition of fines on companies which breach their wage gap disclosure obligation.

Past related articles:
> As demanded by JCP, gov’t will oblige companies to disclose gender gap in wages [May 22, 2022]
> Female regular workers earn 70% of male workers' wages in Japan [October 30, 2021]