Commentary: Despite achieving economic success, Japan struggles with gender gap
TOKYO: The annual release of the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report is always a moment of corking shame for Asia's many leading economies.
The relative gaps between Asian women and men on measures of wellness, education, economy, and politics are enormous, and are non improving sufficiently, as highlighted past the recently published 2022 edition of this report.
As usual, Nordic countries such Republic of iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden took the meridian places in the Global Gender Gap Index 2022 rankings, which surveys 153 countries. Also in the acme 10 were Nicaragua, New Zealand, Ireland, Espana, Rwanda and Germany.
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Australia and the United states of america were among the laggards, ranking 44 and 53 respectively.
Just Nippon, the first mover in Asia's postwar economical renaissance, is struggling in 121st place. This is way out of sync with Japan'due south status as an advanced country with GDP per capita in the world'south elevation xxx countries. Korea is slightly alee at 108th.
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When it comes to Asia's emerging giants, the situation is like. Indonesia ranks 85th, Prc 106th, and India 112th.
Without offering equal opportunity to one-half of Asia's talent, the promise of an Asian Century will never be realised.
ABE'South WOMENOMICS
At the level of political messaging, however, Japan is a state that seems to be taking the upshot seriously, equally "womenomics" has been adopted as a key plank of the authorities'due south programme to revitalise the economy, Abenomics, named for the Prime Government minister Abe Shinzo.
And then it should. The functioning of Japanese girls was equivalent to boys in a contempo study by the System for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that examined fifteen-year-one-time students' knowledge in reading, mathematics and scientific discipline.
Japan likewise needs to human action considering the country'due south working-historic period population has been declining since 1998. Japan at present faces labour shortages, with the size of the workforce projected to turn down by a quarter past 2050.
In this context, clearing-shy Japan sees womenomics equally an alternative to immigration. Abe once said, "Earlier accepting immigrants or refugees, we need to have more activities by women, elderly people, and nosotros must enhance our birth charge per unit."
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At that place are very many symptoms of Nippon's gender problem. It has the tertiary-highest gender wage gap (the difference between male and female person median wages) among the advanced OECD countries – just ahead of Estonia and South Korea.
Only 13 per cent of Japanese women concord management positions, the second-lowest of the OECD, afterward South Korea. In 2017, women occupied just 5 per cent of the seats on the boards of listed companies.
And women are also underrepresented in the political arena, accounting for only ten per cent of the members of the lower firm of the Diet (parliament).
A Piece of work IN PROGRESS
Every bit part of the Abenomics programme, authorities initiatives to facilitate women'due south participation in the economy include targets for participation and advancement of women in the workforce, increasing day care and afterwards-school intendance, recruiting and promoting women in regime, and reviewing the tax and social security system.
Since the launch of these initiatives, the Japanese economy has enjoyed faster growth. And this has helped push up the proportion of women with a task from lx.7 per cent in 2022 to 69.6 per cent in 2018.
But a large share of women remain in "non-regular jobs", primarily part-time positions.
Japan's womenomics initiative very much remains a work in progress. Nippon'southward gender gap is by far the largest among all advanced economies, and over the by year its ranking in the Global Gender Gap Index fell some 11 positions from 2018, driven by a widening of the political gender gap.
At this moment, there is only one woman in Abe's 18-member cabinet. If Abe is serious nigh his womenomics initiative, at the very least, he needs to put more than women into leadership positions.
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Merely womenomics needs to go a nationwide initiative to be effective.
Japanese corporations need to adopt a family-friendly piece of work civilization and more efficient work practices.
Information technology is impossible for Japanese women to combine work and family unit life when corporate life is characterised past long working hours, compulsory overtime, evening socialising with colleagues, and transfers to offices far from domicile.
Nihon'south poor piece of work-life balance also ways that men have piffling time to contribute to family life, which would support women who wish to piece of work and also to accept a family unit.
In Japan, women devote nearly 4 hours a twenty-four hours to housework and childcare, compared to less than one hour for men.
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The regime is implementing "work-style" reforms to limit overtime and mandate equal pay for equal piece of work, but it is not even so articulate how much things volition really modify.
It is crucial that all segments of Japanese society and politics work harder to ensure the success of womenomics.
Japan'south Gdp could be lifted past some fifteen per cent if women's labour force participation charge per unit converged to that of men, and if women'southward average monthly hours worked were to rise to the OECD boilerplate, co-ordinate to Kathy Matsui, vice chair of Goldman Sachs Japan.
Just improve gender equality for Japanese women is not merely a question of economics. Information technology could too exist a vehicle for improving homo well-being in this country where citizens are reportedly less satisfied with their lives than the OECD average.
John West is an Adjunct Professor at Tokyo's Sophia University and Executive Manager of the Asian Century Institute. This article outset appeared on the Lowy Institute'south blog, The Interpreter.
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