Japan: In statements made in honour of International Women’s Day, Japanese Prime Minister Mr. Fumio Kishida vowed to “Work even harder” to address gender inequality, including one of the biggest gender wage discrepancies in the world.

Mr. Kishida stated that Japan needed to eliminate the pay gap, appoint more female executives, and stop the tendency of women taking on lower-paying contract job after giving birth.

“We will press forward with reviewing parts of our tax system that deter women from entering the workforce, and introduce systems in which it is easier than ever for both men and women to take childcare leave,” Mr. Kishida cited in a video address.

In a separate news conference, Chief Cabinet Secretary Mr. Hirokazu Matsuno stated that, more needed to be done as Japanese women still found it “quite difficult” to balance work and household duties despite some improvements in working conditions for women.

Japan has the greatest gender pay disparity in the Group of Seven, with Japanese women in 2020 on average earning around 75 percent as much as men for full-time work. Japan was placed 116 out of 146 countries for gender parity in the World Economic Forum’s global report last year and 104 out of 190 countries in the World Bank’s most recent assessment of women’s economic chances, despite attempts by successive Japanese administrations to address gender disparity.

The Kishida administration enacted regulations last year mandating businesses with 301 or more employees to reveal wage gaps between male and female employees. Tokyo Shoko Research estimates that there are less than 1 percent of companies on the Tokyo Stock Exchange with female chief executives, despite a recent increase in the number of women in lower-level management roles.

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