Chen Cheng
According to the 2021 World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, Japan’s Gender Gap Index is ranked 120th out of 156 countries, which is disproportionally low when compared to Japan’s GDP, which is ranked third. This paper will discuss gender discrimination in the Japanese labour market and the implications in terms of wages and employment by the discussion of Japanese gender stereotypes, the male-breadwinner model and the Japanese tax system; the combination of discontinuity hypothesis with life-time employment; and the combination of statistical discrimination model with the Japanese employment system. And, according to this paper, gender discrimination persists in the Japanese labour market in 2021, with women’s wages and employment prospects worse than men’s. In addition to this, the importance of improving women’s labour outcomes in the face of a shrinking labour force in Japan is discussed in this paper, as well as the policies that should be improved.