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Opinion

1 Dec 2014

Author:
Saul Takahashi, Japan, Korea, and the Pacific Islands Researcher, Business & Human Rights Resource Centre

Is the tide turning against discrimination of women in Japanese workplaces?

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A ground-breaking judgment by the Japanese Supreme Court has established what arguably should always have been obvious – that women should not be penalized for becoming pregnant.  The case was brought by a physiotherapist who had requested her employer (a hospital in Hiroshima) for reassignment to a less physically strenuous position, on the occasion of her second pregnancy.  The employer obliged, but also removed her from her managerial position – in other words a demotion, with the corresponding drop in salary.  Japanese law expressly allows for pregnant women to request these kinds of reassignments, and forbids companies from disadvantaging women who make such requests.  This fairly straightforward legal background notwithstanding, the woman had to take her case to the Supreme Court for justice – both the district and the appeals court had ruled in favour of the employer. 

Most of the larger, household name companies have policies in place which should, at least in theory, prevent the kind of treatment this woman received.  Nevertheless, by all accounts pregnancy discrimination – called maternity harassment in Japan, or “matahara” for short - is widespread, and while the bad old days of companies asking blatant questions of female candidates in hiring interviews are gone, it remains the case that women are often simply expected to leave full time employment when they have children, and to become a full time housewife.  Shortly after the judgment, the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare (MOHLW) announced that it would conduct the first ever national inquiry into sexual and maternity harassment in the workplace.  The Ministry stated that labour offices around the country had received over 10,000 such complaints during 2013, and that it feared this number was “but the tip of the iceberg”.

The numbers speak for themselves.  The percentage of managerial positions held by women – 10.6 percent according to the government, one of the lowest in the OECD – remains an international embarrassment.  A survey of companies by the MOHLW shows that the percentage of women managers actually went down in the 2013 financial year, to 6.6 percent – and the percentage of women managers in the civil service, though increasing, remains at a lowly 3 percent.   Surely there are many factors for this, but it is widely recognized that “matahara” is one of them. 

The government has announced measures to grapple the issue, including a bill to force companies with over 300 employees to set numerical targets of women managers, and to publicize progress in this area.  Pressure from big business resulted in initial plans for binding national targets being abandoned – nevertheless, publication of company performance should at least be an incentive.  Unfortunately, unrelated political factors have led to the shelving of this bill, pending an election in mid-December.

In my (informal) discussions with company representatives (the vast majority of whom are men), many of them say that the focus on numbers masks a more complex picture.  Unlike the “glass ceilings” of Western companies, where qualified women are often passed over for promotion, they argue that the problem in Japan is out of their hands - most women, they argue, are simply not interested in promotion, and do not stay on in the company long enough to attain the requisite seniority.  This argument is understandable from their perspective, but it misses the main point, namely that any systemic factors which are preventing women from advancing within the corporate hierarchy have to be addressed.  Many of these factors are out of the control of companies, but certainly more can be done on the corporate side as well.  With the renewed public attention on this issue, it is hoped that companies will oblige.

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Read more on gender discrimination.