Tackling Japan’s gender pay gap

Gender discrimination is not the reason why women earn a lower salary than men in Japan

The mainstream media has long reported on the gender pay gap in Japan, with women typically earning less than men across many industries. So much so that I often encounter foreigners who believe that if a woman and a man are hired in a company for the same position at the same time, the man will have a higher pay right from the start.

Many individuals believe this notion, and the media’s manipulative narrative is certainly to blame. Women are often painted as helpless victims of a social system designed to keep them down.

So let’s look at the facts. The first legislation in Japan addressing equal pay for equal work regardless of gender was enacted in 1985, the so-called “Act on Securing Equal Opportunity and Treatment between Men and Women in Employment.”  It was specifically aimed to eliminate discrimination in the workplace and promote equal employment opportunities and treatment for men and women.

We can see that this issue has been legally dealt with almost forty years ago, but the fact that people believe that an employer in 2023 can take advantage of hiring a woman because of her lower pay, to say the least, is mind-boggling.

We know that the general response to this fact is that despite the legislation, the gender pay gaps still persist in Japan, with women earning on average around 22 percent less than men in comparable roles, as against ‘only’ 11 percent in the countries of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

While there are several reasons at play here, the main one quoted is that women typically work fewer hours and are less competitive at work, which has an impact on their overall earning potential.

I know few women (with and without children ) with higher salaries than men for the same position, and that is due to a gap in nothing less than job performance, which more often than not is a reflection of a higher IQ and a higher consciousness on the job.

Even though giving IQ tests has become less common in Japan as in most Western countries due to controversies, de facto in Japan companies still do have their recruits tested for general intelligence before hiring them.

So let’s look at the real reasons as to why women would potentially earn a lower salary than men other than the often mistaken culprit, i.e., straightforward discrimination.

That women work less is a statistical fact. This is often for a variety of reasons. It might be difficult for women after giving birth to work full-time or pursue occupations with demanding schedules. Caring for a newborn child is not a role society has determined for them by a ‘sexist’ vote, since breastfeeding is indeed a biological function.

In addition, if women believe that leadership positions or promotions take too much work, they could be less likely to pursue them in the first place.

Also, women typically show less interest in competition and this has a direct consequence on their ability to earn.

For instance, even when the benefits are substantial, women are less likely than males to participate in competitions. This might be because women are also less risk-averse than men, and men are expected to do more and better.

This has been reported by a Japanese not-for-profit organization (NPO) we wrote about a few weeks ago, which explained that Japanese men tend to fall into depression and are more suicide-prone because of the social pressure put on them to succeed.

Also, women are less likely than men to bargain for better pay, which is related to the fact that women tend to have more agreeable personalities. In fact, in the most widely used system of traits which is called the Five-Factor Model, women score higher on agreeableness.

Agreeableness is also associated with compassion, empathy, and a desire to help others. No wonder women also compose the vast majority of Catholics in Japan and South Korea.

The undesirable consequence of having a highly agreeable personality is to be prone to putting the needs of others before your own. But high agreeableness can make it challenging to assert oneself that is why if we talk to anyone in an HR department they will tell us that women on average are also less likely than their male colleagues to negotiate their starting salary and request raises.

Therefore the assertion that the lower salaries of women are solely attributable to a male-dominated society is unsupported. It would be of great advantage for a more productive discussion on how to improve society if we dispense with this claim once and for all. 

It will help pay direct attention to more pressing social issues in Japanese society, such as the challenges posed by an aging population and declining birth rates.

*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.

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