Sex Discrimination in Japan

The management techniques of Japanese business firms are admired

around the world – yet more than 70 percent of these companies refuse

to accept applications from female college graduates. According Japan’s

labor ministry, less than 20 percent of the nation’s businesses offer men

and women equal opportunities on the job. Overall, women hold only

6.2 percent of all executive positions in Japanese companies.

Japan’s 22 million working women represent 40 percent of the I

country’s paid labor force; however, women account for only 6.4 per-

cent of the nation’s scientists, 2.4 percent of its engineers, and 9 percent

of its lawyers. Women’s wages average only about half as much as men’s,

in good part because most women are restricted to traditionally female

(and lesser-paying) occupations such as teaching and clerical work.

Akiko, a 23-year-old office worker at a trading company, is fairly typical

of Japanese women in the work force. Like most female college gradu-

ates, she serves as an assistant to the men in her office, bringing them tea

and handling their errands.

These work patterns must be viewed in the context of a culture that

regards women’s place – especially married women’s place – as being

in the home. In a 2000 survey of Japanese women 20 to 59 years old,

only 17 percent felt that the desirable lifestyle for women was to work

indefinitely. Most respondents (55 percent) favored “withdrawing into

home life” and reentering the labor force at some later time (ideally on

a part-time basis).

Despite the continuing importance of traditional gender-role so-

cialization, Japan has been influenced by the international movement

for women’s rights. In 2001, after seven years of public debate, Japan’s

parliament—at the time, about 97 percent male— passed an Equal Em-

ployment Bill which would encourage employers to end sex discrimina-

tion in hiring, assignment, and promotion policies. One key target of

the new law was severe restrictions on overtime and late-night work by

women; these restrictions have prevented many women from entering

or advancing in their chosen occupations. However, Japanese feminist

groups remain dissatisfied because the Equal Employment Bill merely

requires employers to ‘endeavor’ to achieve sexual equality and lacks

strong sanctions to prevent continued discrimination against women.

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