Tokyo, 9 September, /AJMEDIA/
Female full-time workers in Japan were paid wages that were 70 to 80 percent of what their male counterparts received last year, a government survey showed, underscoring the challenge the country faces in achieving gender equality in workplaces.
While the gap has been narrowing, Japan lags behind some European nations like Sweden, which has achieved over 90 percent parity. The figure reflects that the number of female workers in managerial posts in Japan is still low, while the average length of employment is shorter for women than men, the government said.
Japan’s average wage level for women was 74.8 against 100 for men in the 2023 survey. Kochi Prefecture saw the narrowest gender gap in wages with 80.4, while the gap was the widest in Tochigi Prefecture at 71.0.
It is the first time the government has released the gender wage gap index since making it mandatory for companies with 301 workers or more in 2022 to report such data, aiming to encourage more women to join the workforce at a time when Japan’s rapidly aging population is expected to further worsen the shortage of labor.
Regional differences in wage levels for men and women are seen as one reason why more and more female workers prefer to move to urban areas like Tokyo, where more jobs are available and wages are higher than in rural Japan.
The government has also set itself the goal of boosting the percentage of women in managerial positions to at least 30 percent by 2030.
According to the private research firm Teikoku Databank Ltd, the percentage of women in such positions rose to 10.9 percent in a recent survey, topping 10 percent for the first time. Around 11,300 firms responded to the survey conducted in July.