According to the report of Nihon Keizai Shimbun on October 18, data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development shows that the wage gap between men and women in Japan has narrowed by 15 percentage points to 21.3% in the 25 years to 2022. Due to the improvement of employee benefits by enterprises, the wage gap between men and women in Japan has been reduced, but it is still about twice the average level in developed countries. In order to further narrow the gap, it is necessary to create an environment that allows male and female employees to work equally.
Claudia Golding, who won this year's Nobel Prize in Economics, praised Japan's increasing female labor participation rate at a press conference on the 9th, but also proposed a topic that "it is not enough to just make women the workforce.
According to a survey by the OECD comparing the weekly total income gap between men and women, the United States had 17% in 2022, the UK had 14.5%, and France had 11.6% in 2021, all of which were smaller than the gap in Japan. The average level of OECD members is 11.9%.
The main reason for the large wage gap between men and women in Japan is not only that women are more likely to engage in informal jobs such as part-time jobs, but also that women have a lower proportion in management positions and shorter working years. According to the basic wage structure survey, the monthly basic wage for Japanese men in 2022 was 342000 yen (approximately 2280 US dollars), and for women it was 258900 yen. And 25 years ago, this gap was about 120000 yen.
To further narrow the gap, increasing the proportion of female managers is crucial.
According to the Labor Policy Research and Training Institute, the proportion of women in management positions in Japan was 13.2% in 2021. There is a significant distance between Sweden's 43% and the United States' 41.4%.
According to the analysis report of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare on the wage gap between men and women, the overall wage level of women is nearly 76% of that of men, but the wage level of women holding positions such as ministers and section chiefs is nearly 88% of that of men. If the number of women in management positions increases, the wage gap between men and women is likely to narrow.