'Biased against women': Japan's gender gap the widest among OECD countries, World Bank study shows

Japan has the most pronounced gender gap among the 34 high-income nations of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and ranks just 73rd out of the 190 countries surveyed in a new study conducted by the World Bank.

The study, released on Monday, ahead of International Women's Day on Friday, once again makes grim reading for a nation that has long recognised that it has a significant gender imbalance when it comes to legal rights and opportunities for men and women, yet has largely been unable to rectify those issues, analysts say.

Shockingly, the World Bank's annual Women, Business and the Law report for 2024 ranks Japan below the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola, Nepal and Lesotho in a multidimensional assessment of equality between genders.

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The report ranks nations on eight metrics, including pay, marriage, entrepreneurship opportunities and workplace conditions, with two new areas added to the 2024 report - childcare services and safety from violence.

And while Japan fared well in access to childcare services, the World Bank did raise red flags in a number of other areas, including a failure to make progress on improving the long-standing problems of unequal pay and opportunities for male and female employees.

With all the elements taken into account, Japanese women enjoy only 72.5 per cent of the legal rights and protections that Japanese men do, the study concluded. In comparison, the average across the OECD is 84.9 per cent.

The report also noted that women entrepreneurs do not benefit from the same opportunities as their male counterparts, while also calling for changes to Japan's legal framework to deal with cases of domestic violence and sexual harassment.

Akiko, who works for a major media company, said the differences between full-time male employees in management positions and the dozens of freelance editors and translators were stark. And despite their interest in finding a way to close that gap, she said even lawyers had recommended that they not "rock the boat" in search of improved conditions.

"I would say that 80 per cent of the people at this company are freelancers on far, far lower pay and with none of the benefits of regular full-time staff, even though the company could not operate without our work," said Akiko, who declined to provide her family name.

"We did not even have real contracts until people started to complain about working conditions a few years ago, when the company started giving us documents that described us as 'contractors without benefits' and made it clear that they could fire us at any time and with very little reason," she told This Week in Asia.

The consequence of being a freelance contributor on a rolling contract is that Akiko and the rest of the largely female workforce get paid less and are regularly required to work overnight shifts.

"Lots of women just put up with it because it is easy for the company to fire people and get new staff," she said. "And when we spoke to a lawyer, he said we might win the case in court and get a payout of a couple of million yen, but we would lose our job straight away."

Japan's low ranking in the World Bank study flies in the face of repeated commitments by Japanese governments to elevate women to the same status as men in every area of society.

In 2014, for example, then prime minister Shinzo Abe declared that his administration intended to make women "shine" in the workplace and broader society, and that the benefits of his "womenomics" policies would be evident by 2020. Abe's vision was for the number of women in managerial positions to rise from 9.2 per cent in 2014 to 15 per cent by 2020 and women in senior roles in government agencies to climb from 3.5 per cent in 2015 to 7 per cent. Neither target was met.

Targets for women taking greater roles in neighbourhood community organisations also fell short, along with plans for more women to return to the office after having a baby and for men to help out more around the family home.

The 2020 deadline came and went with little to show for Abe's grand plans, with the Council for Gender Equality indicating that the original deadline be pushed back by a decade. There is no sign that target will be met either.

Sumie Kawakami, a lecturer at Yamanashi Gakuin University who focuses on women and gender issues, said Japan's poor gender equality could not be blamed entirely on the nation's political leaders.

"The system of Japan is biased against women, but there are also problems in our society that need to be overcome," she said.

"Looking at women in the workplace in Japan, for example, we see that many women do not want to be promoted because that would require longer hours and greater responsibilities," she said.

"And they balance career moves against being a good mother, and they usually come down on the side of being a mother."

Women are under huge social pressures as well, according to Kawakami, with relatives likely to intervene to suggest they spend more time being a housewife than an employee or neighbours gossiping about how they are never at home.

"Women are still supposed to follow the norms of this society, even if that runs counter to what they actually want," she said.

She was, however, optimistic that a new generation of young people saw things quite differently.

"I actually think things are changing," she said. "I see young fathers far more involved in family life and helping raise the children more than in the past."

It could take some years for these people to make it into senior positions at companies and other organisations, she agreed, which would mean that younger generations of Japanese women might not see their dreams of a career fulfilled, but their daughters would have greater parity with Japanese men.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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