Pizza Nobnom

Mr. Aaron Neugeboren

English 10
June 15, 2016

Gender Discrimination Against Women in the Japanese Workplace

Even though Japan is considered as a highly developed country, surprisingly it

remains near the bottom of the gender gap ranking. You might not see the importance of this
situation yet, but by acknowledging this you can help prevent it. In fact, the reason that
women in Japan work part time jobs more than men is no other than gender discrimination.
So would you want to help change that?
Gender discrimination has been widely spread throughout different countries around
the world for many centuries up until now. It is known as the act of discriminating based on
gender, which normally occurs among women because of the unfair stereotype, where
humans think women are always weaker than men. The act of discrimination may include
unequal wages between women and men, maternity discrimination and sexual harassment. It
is hard to believe that the rate of gender discrimination is continuing to increase and many
countries are still treating women unequally, when there are many laws to protect every
human being. According to Global Gender Gap index in 2015, a shocking statistic shows that
there is no country in the world that has 100% gender equality, which means that there are
women in every single country still facing this problem. No one would imagined a well
developed country like Japan to have gender discrimination, it is placed 101 st country for
gender equality on the annual review about equality from the world economic forum. But,
YES it is true; Japan has a very high rate of gender discrimination in their country, especially
at workplaces. (Rankings, 2015)
Talking about Japan, it is apparent that there is a large gender gap between men and
women, as the action of discriminating women persists in many places within the country.
Although equal legal rights for men and women were determined after World War II, women

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are still treated unequally in term of the economics and working conditions. The societies in
Japan criticize women as a weaker gender, whereas men are viewed as more powerful and
have ability to do more work. With these kinds of gender bias that the societies have
characterized for women, it leads to the problem of women struggling to find good jobs. Even
though the unemployment rate in Japan for both men and women are very low (men 5% and
women 4%), researchers have found out that the percentage of men working in part time job
is much lower than women work part-time (men only 10% and women 35%). The differences
between the two numbers seem to encourage Japanese women to attend good universities and
become more educated than before. Despite establishing good education for women, it does
not help companies and workplaces in Japan to accept more women into a full-time job at all.
This is because women are considered as the gender that should stay at home and serve their
husband as a good wife. (Liebheit, 2013)
The major point which prevents women from rejoining their workforce, causing a
high rate of women working part-time is maternity discrimination. This normally occurs
before and after the pregnancy, where women attempt to come to work because of their
financial difficulties.

Even though, there are laws to protect women from maternity

employment, women are still forced to work over 8 hours a day with no consideration for
exemption from hard work ,and at the same time men work exactly the same amount. Six
weeks before childbirth; mothers have to leave their workforce for maternity. But, once they
dropped out, the opportunity of getting back to work at the same position is very low and in
some cases, leaving their workforce for only a couple of months can eventually cause women
to lose their jobs.
Being told to clean out your desk because you are pregnant may be illegal,
but it happens. Even more frequent are workplace demotions. Just ask the
"Jane Doe" of Japan's pregnancy discrimination law, a woman whose

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landmark lawsuit against her employer may be a game-changer for women
in the workplace here. (Cox, 2015)
As shown above, there are laws that have been used through many nations, including Japan,
for banning discrimination against pregnant women at workplaces. For example, The Labor
Standard Law and the Equal Employment Opportunity Law were used to prohibit women
from doing hard and heavy work that could cause injury. (Maternity Employment Protection
and Rights, 2016) Sadly, Japanese people tend to ignore those laws, which mean that nearly
every pregnant woman will have to find a new job and for people who are desperate for
money, part-time job would probably be their best choice as they are easier to attend.
Regardless of being pregnant, Japanese women carry on working hard for their child.
However, maternity discrimination is not the only factor that causes the percentage of
Japanese women working part-time to be so high. Sexual harassment is also known as one of
the reasons why Japanese women rather choose to work part-time jobs. The act of sexually
harassment is the most common type of discrimination usually found at workplaces. A third
of Japanese women have experienced sexually harassment by their peers at workplace or
sometimes even by their bosses. They would normally feel very uncomfortable but do not
have any choices, apart from letting this to continue to happen. In some serious cases,
Japanese women have been asked out or eventually force to have sex.
The survey of more than 9,600 women aged 25-44 who are currently working
or were previously employed found that 40% had been touched in an
unpleasant way while 17% had been asked or pressed to have a sexual
relationship. (McCurry, 2016)
According to many reports, researchers have proved that Japanese men are being
disrespectful to women by forcing them to do whatever they wanted them to do. Furthermore,
a huge amount of women have been reporting to the workplace, but in spite of getting help,
they either get nothing back or sometimes reporting even makes the situation worse. So, most

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women would end up with only one choice, which is dropping out of their full time job. They
would then choose to work part-time rather than suffer from being sexually harassed at their
workplace.
In conclusion, gender discrimination at workplaces in Japan seems to have become
one of the massive problems that are holding back the economical growth within the nation.
No wonder why the amount of women working in part-time job is much greater than men.
According to what stated above, it can be seen that Japanese women are undergoing in the
circumstance that force them to be employed for part-time jobs. Either because of maternity
discrimination or sexual harassment, these factors are currently causing the percentage of
women working part-time to rise up. In the case that gender discrimination in Japan persists
for a long period of time, it is possible that the attitude of thinking that women are weaker
than men will disperses to other areas and will ultimately affecting women all around the
world. On the other hand, if Japanese people recognize that gender discrimination has already
been hurting many parts in their country, and start to implement policies for a gender-equal
society that removes all of the stereotypes contrasting between women and men; it would be
an ideal solution. Also, in consequence of eliminating the act of discrimination, the economy
in Japan would develop more than before, bringing advantages toward their country.
However, this issue will not be possible to solve if Japan is the only country that is fighting
on its own. Every country in the world should support and collaborate together in
campaigning, stopping gender discrimination from occurring, for a better future for our
peacefulness world.

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