Chen Cheng

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<p><em><strong><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Introduction</span></strong></em></p> <p style="text-align: justify;">According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report (2021), Japan ranks 120th out of 156 countries in terms of gender parity, while the UK ranks 23rd and the US ranks 30th; in terms of economic participation and opportunity, Japan ranks 117th in 2021, while the UK ranks 55th and the US ranks 30th. Japan is the third-largest economy after the US and China; however, based on the current ranking, Japan has the largest gender discrimination among advanced economies. And researchers agree that gender discrimination will continue to be a major issue in Japanese employment even in 2021 because of vertical sex segregation and wage disparities (Ueno, 2021; Nagamatsu, 2021; OECD, 2017; Nemoto, 2016).</p>

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<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: justify;">I analyze Japanese gender stereotypes and the male-breadwinner model and the possible effects of Japanese traditional family structure, Japanese employment system and Japanese tax system on the gender discrimination in the labour market by focusing on wages and employment. My approach derives from discontinuity hypothesis and Phelps’s (1972) statistical discrimination model. Followed by discussing the importance to improve the labour market outcomes of women in Japan.</span></p>

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<p style="text-align: justify;"><em><strong><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Japanese gender stereotypes and the impacts on the gender discrimination in the labour market</span></strong></em></p> <p style="text-align: justify;">Gender stereotypes have further shaped Japan’s family structure, as illustrated by Fraser’s (1994) male-breadwinner model, which also demonstrates the incomparable difficulties that Japanese women face compared to their counterparts in other societies. This model proposes the family structure in which men serve as breadwinners as primary earners, while women, as secondary earners with no or little income, are responsible for caring for children and the elderly (Fraser, 1994). As a result, the privatization of caring work becomes an impediment to keeping Japanese women at the bottom of the labour market, whereas in other counties, caring work is either socialized (as in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark) or commodified (as in Singapore and Hong Kong) (Ueno, 2021). </p>

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<p style="text-align: justify;">The current state of gender discrimination in Japan is closely related to one of its inherent social characteristics that I would like to refer to as “gender stereotypes”. Okanda and Taniguchi (2021) designed an thought-provoking experiment and announced the results that Japanese 5-and 7-year-olds exhibited a boy bias toward robots and cars while exhibiting a girl bias toward sunflower, and they concluded that Japanese children may begin to attribute gender stereotypes to objects as early as the age of five, with this tendency increasing with age. Gender stereotypes may influence Japanese to have a subconscious concept of “female job” and “male job” at a young age, and a gender stereotype is harmful when it limits women’s and men’s capacity to develop their personal abilities, pursue their professional careers and/or make life choices.</p>

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<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 18pt;"><em><strong>Discussion: the implications for Japanese women in terms of employment and wages </strong></em></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;">Shinzo Abe, Japan’s former prime minister, has positioned himself as an enthusiastic advocate for promoting equality in Japanese society, and adopted the term “womenomics” to describe a key component of his economic reform policy in 2013, with the goal of increasing the number of women in the labour force (BBC, 2018). And, according to Statistics Bureau Japan (2021), the female labour-force participation rate has risen over the last seven years, peaking at 52.2% in 2019 (see Figure 1). Nonetheless, Atsuko Muraki, a former vice-minister for Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, stated that while female employment in Japan has increased in quantity, it has not improved in quality (BBC, 2018). This is supported by a closer examination of the types of work performed by women – six out of ten women workers work for the low wage on a non-regular basis, only 15% of senior and leadership positions are held by women, and Japan’s raw gender earnings gap of 22.5% was much higher than the OECD average of 12.5% percent in 2020. (WEF, 2020; Ueno, 2021; OECD, 2021). The following paragraphs will go over the employment situation for Japanese women in non-regular work and regular work, as well as wage disparities.</p>

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<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><em><strong>A. Non-regular worker </strong></em></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;">Non-regular work typically consists of dispatch, part-time, temporary, or contract work, which has the disadvantages of being low-paying and having less job security than regular work (Ueno, 2021). Non-regular work is preferred by the vast majority of Japanese female employees. As shown in Figure 2, non-regular work is preferred by 54.4% of Japanese female employees and 22.2% of Japanese male employees in 2020. One of the main reasons Japanese women choose non-regular work is “easier to balance household, childcare, etc.” (see Figure 3). Furthermore, according to the OECD (2020), Japanese women spend on average, 3 hours and 44 minutes on unpaid labour (e.g., household chores and childcare) per day, while men spend only 41 minutes. Obviously, the burdensome family responsibilities are the significant factor driving Japanese women to engage in non-regular work in Japan’s “male-breadwinner” society. </p>

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<p style="text-align: justify;">The Japanese tax system is the third reason for keeping female employees engaged in non-regular work. The Japanese tax system proposed that household heads receive tax exemption <br />for dependents if their spouses’ income is less than 10,000 euros (Ueno, 2021). This tax system was designed to reduce the income gap between families, however, it has the unintended consequence of exacerbating employment inequity, particularly for wives who earn far less than husbands. To avoid losing their legal status as dependents, 26% of Japanese women keep their income under this limit by limiting their working hours (Ueno, 2021). Therefore, Japanese women prefer non-regular jobs that offer flexible working hours and lower pay than regular jobs. </p> <p style="text-align: justify;">Women who choose non-regular work contribute to society as well, and this choice does not imply a lack of higher education or insufficient earning power. It’s a decision under the considerations of balancing work and family. From economic perspective, their wage should include the opportunity cost of men not going to work or reducing their working hours. Such a family role should not be taken lightly, nor should non-regular work be mercilessly exploited by employers, so the protection of rights and wage of non-regular work deserve more attention.</p>

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<p style="text-align: justify;">In addition to family responsibilities, the discontinuity hypothesis suggests that life-time employment, which is one of the characteristics of Japanese style management, is the second reason that forces Japanese women to choose non-regular work.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">Discontinuity hypothesis focuses on the effect of different labour market histories for male and female employees on employment. Japanese companies that practice the life-time employment will hire fresh graduates each year during the graduation season to provide life-long job opportunities (Ono, 2010). Although this system gives Japanese employees a strong sense of job security, it has a clear negative impact on female employees: employers will not favour the resumes with a career gap (Drucker, 1971). Up to 60% of Japanese women choose to quit job after getting married or having the first child, resulting in a discontinuity in their labour experience and human capital depreciation during the years they are engaged in household work (Ueno, 2021). When Japanese women, even highly educated women, want to return to the labour market after a few years’ full-time household life, it is difficult for them to find a place in regular work due to life-time employment system and the depreciation of human capital.</p>

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<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 18pt;"><em><strong>B. Regular worker</strong></em></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;">Aside from the high proportion of women in non-regular employment, another major indicator of gender discrimination in the Japanese labour market is that female regular employees are not promoted at the same rate as men. Women hold few managerial positions, and in 2018, Japanese women made up only 11.2% of directors and 18.3% of section chiefs in private corporations (Gender Equality Bureau, 2020). In addition, when compared to men in the same position, women have limited access to core business.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">My opinion can be proven using Phelps’s (1972) statistical discrimination model, which is that Japanese companies may think that managerial positions are only possible for physically and mentally healthy men, who are also often exempt from family responsibilities, whereas women are considered “suitable” for lower-status jobs. The statistical discrimination model focuses on discrimination resulting from interpreting a group's typical characteristics as the characteristics of each individual in the group and applying the group's typical characteristics as employment standards. The characteristics of the Japanese employment system in internal promotion to management positions include long-term selection, extensive personnel transfers with relocation, and long work hours (Nagamatsu, 2021). Women are often perceived as being unable to meet such company demands because the group’s characteristic that Japanese women always quit their jobs after getting married, and even if they stay, their working hours are more likely to be affected by family chores, so they are more likely to be placed in jobs with fewer promotion opportunities. </p>

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<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 18pt;"><em><strong>C. Wage gap</strong></em></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;">The high proportion of Japanese female employees in non-regular employment in Japan, combined with the difficult situation for female employees in regular employment, contribute to a wide wage gap of 22.5% in 2020, the third largest among OECD countries (see Figure 4). The large wage disparity is also an important indicator of gender discrimination in the Japanese <br />labour market.</p>

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<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 18pt;"><em><strong>Why is it important for Japan to improve women’s labour-market outcomes?</strong></em></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;">Removing barriers to employment is crucial to increase fairness and inclusive growth by allowing women to fulfil their potential. Japan is looking to women to offset its shrinking labour force, which is expected to drop dramatically over the next two decades, from 65.3 million in 2017 to 52.5 million in 2040 (a 19.6% loss) due to aging population and declining birthrate (Ip, 2019; Fleming, 2019). If female participation rates converge to those of men by 2060, the labour force would be 10% larger than if participation rates remained unchanged, assisting in the maintenance of per capita income levels (OECD, 2017).</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">Therefore, Japanese policymakers should take steps to improve women’s labour market outcomes, such as socializing and/or commodifying childcare jobs; reforming the tax systems that reduce work incentives for second earners; and expanding social insurance coverage and training for female non-regular workers, and removing employment limits for female regular workers.</p>

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<p><span style="font-size: 18pt;"><em><strong>Conclusion</strong></em></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;">This paper suggests that gender discrimination still exists in the Japanese labour market in 2021 and that women’s wages and employment prospects are worse than men’s. As evidenced by studies, Japanese females prefer non-regular work due to family responsibilities, the life-time employment system, and the Japanese tax system; however, even in regular employment, they find it difficult to advance because of the gender stereotypes that women cannot meet the demands of the Japanese employment system; as a result, there is a large wage disparity between Japanese female and male employees. But women’s labour-market inclusion is vital for Japan’s economic growth, so the Japanese government should improve domestic work, taxation, and employment policies in order to improve women’s labour-market outcomes.</p>

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