January 21, 2025

Female regular workers earn up to 12.55 million yen less annually than their male counterparts. This was shown in the Japanese Communist Party Policy Commission’s calculation.

The Act on the Promotion of Female Participation and Career Advancement in
the Workplace (known as the Women’s Empowerment Act) obliges corporations with more than 301 employees to make public their gender wage gaps.

The JCP made the calculation based on the 2023 Labor Ministry data regarding the gender pay gap at 1,063 listed companies.

According to the JCP calculation, Japan’s leading factory automation manufacturer Keyence Corporation had the largest male-female gap in annual earnings (12.55 million yen), followed by UNIQLO’s parent company Fast Retailing Co., Ltd. (8.5 million yen), Mizuho Trust & Banking Co., Ltd. (8.13 million yen), Japan’s major online flea market operator Mercari Inc. (8 million yen), and Itochu Corporation (7.9 million yen).

Calling for government responsibility to narrow the gender pay gap, the JCP demands that the government ensure that companies disclose the pay differences between their male and female workers and require companies to draw up and publicize their action plan to eliminate such differences. The JCP also demands that the government instruct and oversee companies to implement their action plans. In addition, the JCP urges the government to figure out and analyze in more detail the actual gender pay gap situation by job type, hourly rate, firm size, and region, and to formulate an action plan to correct the situation.

Furthermore, the JCP stresses that in order to accurately understand the reality of male-female wage gaps, the need is to oblige companies to disclose more data such as the difference between wages of regular and non-regular workers.