Prime Minister Fumio Kishida addresses a May 20 council meeting that is working on making his pet project of new capitalism a reality. The government will require large companies to disclose systemic gender wage disparities that have given Japan the worst record among Group of Seven nations, according to Koichi Ueda.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced at a May 20 meeting of a council working to transform his pet project of new capitalism into reality, that decision to further the role of women in the workplace was announced by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
Kishida indicated that work would continue, so the new system is in place this summer.
It would cover around 18,000 companies with more than 300 employees. Firms will have to disclose the wage disparity between their regular and irregular employees, in addition to disclosing the difference on remuneration between female and male workers.
The information will be made available through the websites of each company or through a special database set up by the labor ministry. The goal is to allow job seekers to verify wage disparity levels at companies they are interested in.
Companies that ignore this obligation or egregiously fail to heed directives issued by regional labor bureaus will be shamed by having their names publicly disclosed.
Under the current system to promote female participation in the workplace, companies are required to choose at least two items from a wide-ranging list, such as their ratio of female employees, and disclose that data.
The wage disparity item will be included in the list, but it will be mandatory for companies with more than 300 employees.
A labor ministry council will discuss the details, and ministerial directives will be revised to reflect the change.
The government is considering requiring listed companies to include the wage disparity figure in their annual financial statements. That would require a revision of the Cabinet Office directive, and the change could be in effect from 2023.
The median wage of female employees in Japan is 22.5 percent less than the median wage of male employees, the worst figure among G-7 nations, according to government documents.
Some G-7 nations already have rules for disclosing gender wage disparity.
The situation in Japan is linked to a range of labor practices, according to experts.
They say that a larger percentage of women hold down irregular jobs, which offer lower pay rates than those for workers in regular positions.
The fact that many women tend to leave the workplace to marry or raise their families is a factor that is a key factor in determining wages at Japanese companies.
The small number of female executives who command high salaries also contributes to the large wage disparity.
But major companies are beginning to rethink the disparity issue because of the degree to which women are allowed to advance at a company, which is something that many investors look at when making decisions about where to place their money.