Japan Press Weekly

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2024 October 23 - 29 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

LDP-led gov’t unwilling to respond to UN committee’s call for dealing with gender-based indirect discrimination

Akahata on October 24 reported that the gender wage gap remains unchanged in Japan because of indirect discrimination against women represented by a dual-track management system: a fast track for the management stream (career track) and a slow track for routine, clerical work (non-career track).

According to Akahata, 60% of large firms with more than 5,000 employees use that system. In the Labor Ministry’s data regarding equal employment opportunity, the percentage of women in career-track positions stood at 21.5% in 2023, and for companies with more than 5,000 employees, it dropped to 12.5%.

An Akahata survey showed that as of September 2023, full-time women workers at large companies with more than 5,001 employees earned 71.7% of what their male counterparts earned. Regarding the wage differences across all employees, women’s incomes stood at 65.8% of men’s.

Japanese Communist Party Executive Committee Chair Tamura Tomoko in March at a House of Councilors Budget Committee meeting pointed out that at large corporations using the dual-track management system, such as major general construction contractor company Kajima Corporation, unlike male workers, normally women are hired on a non-career track or employed as non-regular workers. Criticizing such a situation as indirect discrimination against women, Tamura urged the government to take measures to improve the situation. In response, the then Prime Minister Kishida Fumio said that there is no need to do so.

The UN Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) defines as indirect discrimination laws and programs which have a discriminatory effect on women. The dual-track hiring practice in Japan is obviously an indirect form of discrimination based on gender.

The CEDAW committee has repeatedly pointed out that the Japanese government fails to have understanding of the concept of indirect discrimination and called for measures aimed at eliminating the dual-track employment system.