Asia Pacific Business Review

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Much to be done in Japan’s family and genderequality policies
Nobuko Nagase
To cite this article: Nobuko Nagase (05 Mar 2024): Much to be done in Japan’s family andgender equality policies, Asia Pacific Business Review, DOI: 10.1080/13602381.2024.2320546
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13602381.2024.2320546

Published online: 05 Mar 2024.

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ASIA PACIFIC BUSINESS REVIEW
https://doi.org/10.1080/13602381.2024.2320546

Much to be done in Japan’s family and gender equality
policies
Nobuko Nagase
Faculty of Core Research, Ochanomizu University, Tokyo, Japan
ABSTRACTARTICLE HISTORY

Prime Minister Kishida’s ‘unprecedented’ measures to counter
declining births in Japan include increasing youth incomes, extend­
ing childcare leave entitlement and employee social insurance
entitlement to precarious workers, and targeting 50% of fathers totake childcare leave by 2025 by increasing the childcare allowance
to 80% of salary. He also proposed reskilling opportunities, andmandating firms to disclose their gender wage gap and gendermanagerial gap. However, reform should also make fundamental
changes to Japanese employment practices and the Employee
Social Insurance Scheme which is based on a breadwinnerhousewife model. Unless the government explicitly moves towards
a worker-carer model, the gender wage gap will stay high, andhinder marriage and births, since double income is seen as a must
among younger generation. Fundamental change should be in linewith the new attitudes of young non-married males and females.

Received 15 December 2023
Accepted 10 February 2024
KEYWORDS

Birth decline; family policy;
gender division of labour;
gender equality; Japan;social insurance; wage gap

Introduction
The Kishida government sees the challenge of Japan’s low birth as well as the large
gender wage gap as two top issues to be addressed. Japan’s total fertility rate (TFR)
dropped from 1.57 in 1989 to 1.26 in 2005, then showed slight increase to over 1.4 from2012 to 2018 when the use of childcare leave and childcare places expanded. However,having a second child requires a higher contribution of fathers when both parents work,
but this has not been achieved. The TFR again dropped below 1.4 starting in 2019 andreached another low of 1.26 in 2022. The drop was partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic,but only partly. We see a change in attitude among the young in different surveys, in that
more of them expect to stay single.
Facing a shrinking labour force and prolonged low birth rate, Prime Minister
Kishida’s ‘new capitalism’ emphasizes human capital investment and the increasedrole of women in the economy, as well as the increased role of men in family care.
The Kishida government claimed that it would tackle declining births as neverbefore. It plans to re-construct social policy to support child-rearing, change work
culture to allow fathers take an increased role, and to encourage the increase of
women in management. The government also seeks to extend stronger protection
for non-standard employees by increasing social security coverage. However, to
CONTACT Nobuko Nagase

nagase.nobuko@ocha.ac.jp© 2024 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group2

N. NAGASE

allow more equal involvement of men and women, the implicit contract inherent
in Japanese long-term employment should be reformed, along with a change inthe social protection for dependent wives. How much the Kishida government canreform employment practice and increase paternal involvement in child-rearing is
yet to be seen. Whether Kishida can make a pathway to change social policy froma breadwinner model to a worker-carer model is very important for the coming
years for the Japanese economy, which is experiencing both ageing and declining
births.
In this paper, I will first compare family policy and gender wage gap policies in Japan
with OECD countries. I will then look at Kishida’s new policies on family and on gender.
Second, I will present statistics on the yet stubbornly strong gender division of labour
within couples, showing that former policies have not provided much change in thestrong gender division of labour. The third section argues that such gendered division oflabour within households is embedded in the Japanese employment system. I will discussthe ‘membership/non-membership’ and ‘unlimited contract’ concepts. In the fourth sec­tion, I will argue that the social insurance rules that favour breadwinner-carer model
actually give incentives to married women to stay below the earning threshold and/or
stay at low income. In the fifth section, I will look at changes of youth attitudes, which are
not supporting the gendered division of labour. Lastly, I will show that many policies arestill under discussion, and consider what additional policies might be added to bringabout a stronger impact for Kishida’s policies, since fundamental change of Japaneseemployment system and social security rules must accompany ‘unprecedented’ measures
to address declining births.

Japan’s family and gender equality policies in comparative perspective
In this section, policies for children and policies for gender equality in labour market in
Japan will be compared with other OECD countries.

Policies for children
Figure 1 shows public spending on family benefits from the OECD Social Expendituredatabase of 2019. It gives a general overview of the scale of Japanese expenditure on
family benefits. Benefits in cash include single families, which may not be included in thedata from other countries which do the transfer through tax system. Despite this, benefits
in cash to families are as low as 0.66% of GDP in Japan, and declined from 0.74 in 2011
when the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) regained power from the Democratic Party ofJapan (DPJ) and child benefits in cash again became means tested. Benefits in services
such as day care started to rise from around 0.45% of GDP to the 1.08% of GDP in 2019,reflecting the large increase of childcare places. Support for childcare provision wasreformed in 2012 to include not only day care centres but also nursery schools. Prime
Minister Abe, who came into office in late 2012, made a rapid increase of childcare places.
Tax breaks for families stayed around 0.20% of GDP. In total, the expenditure for families
was 1.95% of GDP in 2019, which is below the OECD average of 2.29%. The Kishida
government furthers plan to increase expenditures for families, especially child allowan­ces, and childcare leave allowance.

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Figure 1. Public spending on family benefits by type of expenditure. (% GDP, and latest available)
Source: OECD Social Expenditure Database. Accessed 19 November. https://www.oecd.org/els/soc/
PF1_1_Public_spending_on_family_benefits.pdf

Policies for closing the gender wage gap
The gender wage gap in Japan is large among the OECD countries. The Equal Employment
Opportunity Law was enacted in 1986, strengthened in 1997 and 2007, but its power isweak as this policy only mandates firms to equally treat both men and women if hired in
the same work category. However, firms hire much fewer women than men in implicit
long-term employment contract, associated with high wage increases and long working
hours. More women tend to be employed in a different and slower promotion work
category and in non-standard work employment. The Japanese public pension still holds‘model insured workers’ as ‘full-time salaried working males’ who have ‘dependent
housewives’. Spouses married to salaried workers are given beneficial treatment as
dependent housewives under the Japanese social security system, as we shall see below.

Kishida’s new family and gender equality policies
Proposed changes in family policy
Kishida’s ‘new capitalism’ proposes to put more focus on the younger generationand the child-rearing life stage as it recognizes the declining births as one of its
most important challenges. The Cabinet Office announced in April 2023 that thepriority is to increase income level of youth, abolish means-test for child allowance,increase the age limit, and double the allowance for the third child from late 2024.
It will also encourage non-standard workers to become regular workers and encou­
rage workers to move into fields with high labour demand by offering re-skilling
opportunities (see Zou 2024).
Second, it proposes to take various measures to change the social climate so that thechild-rearing burden should be born not only young women, but also by men, and bysociety. The government set a target for men’s child-care leave take-up of 50% in 2025,
and 85% in 2030. In order to accelerate the use, Kishida decided to promote disclosure of

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N. NAGASE

take-up by companies, and also to provide support for small and medium-sized compa­
nies. It also proposed to increase the childcare leave allowance to 80% of income for 28
days from the present 67% if both parents take the leave for more than 14 days within 8
weeks after the birth of the child, hoping that the higher replacement rate will allow more
fathers to take the leave. This is planned to be implemented from 2025. The government
will also extend the child-care leave allowance to non-standard workers and selfemployed workers if they are not otherwise entitled to receive it.
Third, the government plans to increase the income of non-standard employees, firstly
by increasing the minimum wage, and secondly by changing social security policy so thatthey will be covered by the employee social security scheme. At the same time, thegovernment will take measures so that housewives do not adjust their working hours tokeep their income below the tax and social security thresholds. It will offer subsidies tocompanies in the coming three years so that increased social security payments for thecompanies and also the employees will be off set by pay increases. The government is also
discussing including even shorter working week employees in the social insurance
scheme.
The fourth point is to encourage women in management. The Kishida government
newly mandated disclosure of the gender wage gap at companies over 300 regular
employees by the Law for the Promotion of Women’s Activities from 2022. Some statistics
were already mandated to be disclosed but companies previously could choose what data
to disclose among options. It also mandated that companies listed on the Prime section of
the Tokyo Stock Exchange disclose female board members and make a Female Executive
Information website in which companies’ appointments of women to executive positions
is shown. Government policy on women is to achieve women’s economic independence,and to progress the Fifth Basic Plan for Gender Equality.

Trends in annual income distribution and domestic work hours of males andfemales
Unchanging gender income gap among ever-married males and females
The policies that aim to increase women’s employment and promotion were alreadyintroduced from late 2012 by the Abe administration, called Womenomics policy. The
policy did result in more women who keep long-term employment, or seishain status, attheir first birth using childcare leave, especially among university graduate females. The
percentage of mothers with young children who keep their long-term job rose to nearly
50% of university graduates, whereas the comparable number was only around 30% in
the early 2000s (Nagase 2018a). The rate should be even higher today. Working hours ofpart-time workers also increased during Womenomics.
However, Figure 2 shows that the gender income gap today is still surprisingly
large. Even though we see an impressive increase in the labour force participationof married women in Employment Status Surveys, their income continues to staylow, unless they keep long-term employment during child-rearing years. The left
side of Figure 2 shows the income gap of ever-married males and females. Ninety
five percent of ever-married males earn more than 2 million, while for ever-marriedfemales, it was only 53% as many quit work and return to non-standard

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Figure 2. Annual income distribution of ever-married and never-married workers. Note: The figure
excludes non-workers. Figures for ‘ever-married’ include those who are married, divorced or widowed.
Source: Statistics Bureau. Employment Status Survey 2022.

employment. Should the statistics include married women out of the labour force,the percentage would be even much smaller, presumably around 35%. On theother hand, income gap between gender is small for never-marrieds, as shown on
the right side of Figure 2.

Large domestic work hour gap within couples
We also see that when married, women do much of home production. The White Paper on
Gender Equality 2023 (Cabinet Office 2023) provides an international comparison of thedifference between men and women in paid and unpaid work, that Japanese men’s daily
paid work time is the longest among OECD countries and Japanese men’s unpaid work
the shortest.
Table 1 shows time use of parents living with children over years using datafrom the Statistics Bureau’s Survey on Time Use and Leisure Activities. We do seesome closing of gender gap compared with 1991, such as a slight increase ofdomestic work by husbands, especially when families have new born babies as canbe seen in the third panel: domestic work of fathers increased from 4.4 hours per
week in 1996 to 15.4 hours in 2021. Yet as also shown in the table, in 2021,
average weekly domestic work hours was 7.6 hours for husbands and 39.2 for
wives, while average work hours were 44.1 for husbands and 19.0 hours for
wives, showing a large disparity. Even for double income couples with children,
average weekly work hours of husbands in 2021 was 50.4 while wives was 28.5,
and average weekly domestic work hour of husbands was 7.1 while that of wives
was 34.8. It is hard to see any strong signs of closing of the gender gap in thetime series.

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Table 1. Weekly work and domestic work hour average of husbands and wives living withchildren.
All married couples with childrenWorkhusbandwife
Domestic work
husband
wife

1996

2006

2016

2021

48.5
17.2
3.0
40.7

47.4
16.5
4.8
41.0

46.4
18.1
6.1
40.4

44.1
19.0
7.6
39.2

52.6
29.9
3.9
33.3

52.6
28.7
5.4
34.3

50.4
28.5
7.1
34.8

54.1
14.6
7.5
43.5

53.1
20.8
11.4
42.8

51.8
22.6
15.4
42.1

Married couples with children, both in labour forceWorkhusband
52.0
wife
31.5
Domestic work
husband
2.3
wife
31.9
Married couples with youngest child 1–2Work
husband
53.2
wife
11.8
Domestic work
husband
4.4
wife
46.2

Note: Husbands and wives with child(ren) living in the household. Data were reported by minutes of an
average day of a week. The author converted to weekly hours. Domestic Work includes household chores,
child care, elderly care and shopping.
Source: Statistics Bureau. Survey on Time Use and Leisure Activities, Long time Series, various years.

Large gender gap in promotion
Due to requirement of long working hours and difference in employment category,
women have been much less likely than men to be promoted to managerial positions.
The female ratio of section heads was around 12% in 2021 according to the Basic Wage
Structure Survey. Using the micro data of the same survey, Nagase (2021) found thatwomen were promoted much later and much less compared with men. For younger
cohorts, the difference in promotion timing between genders became smaller, yet women
were only about half as likely to be promoted as men.

Japanese labour practices that reward high commitment and long-term
employment‘Membership’ and ‘non-membership’
Why is the gender income gap and gender domestic work gap so stubborn when thegovernment has introduced policies to close it? As early as 2003 the Gender Equality
Bureau made a national target of 30% of leadership positions to be held by women by
2020, but it was far from reached. I presume that the strong division of labour withinhouseholds that we see comes only from culture and tradition, but also from Japaneseemployment practices that inherently reward long-term dedication of workers to com­panies, implicitly expecting the workers’ spouses to take care of family and children, andalso from social security insurance that gives comparably high benefits to spouses thatearn below the income threshold so as to be identified as ‘dependent’.
In his report to the Industrial Competitiveness Council, Employment and Human
Resources Subcommittee hearing, Hamaguchi (2013) described Japanese employment
practices as ‘membership type employment’ and ‘non-membership type of employment’.

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7

To be a member, one typically enters a firm at graduation, and is expected to follow
a seniority-based wage path in a lifetime employment contract. In return, employers
typically can order overtime work, and allocate employees to different departments andjobs for human resource development in the long term. On the other hand, some longterm contracts are regionally based, and are offered more to females. When the place of
employment is pre-determined, wages rises are expected to be much less. As for ‘nonmembership work’, described by Hamaguchi, or non-long-term contract work such ashourly part-time employment and fixed-term contract work, where the work hours, job
content, and place of work are defined, wages are typically much lower than long-term
employees. Such ‘non-membership’ employees are typically seen as outsiders by com­pany-based labour unions.
Since it is not easy for workers to raise children under ‘membership contracts’, many
companies have given a spousal allowance to add to the husband’s salary, expecting thatthe employees have a low-earning dependent spouse to care of children and the elderly.
Such spousal allowance is not only added to the monthly salary, but also to the annual
bonus payment, and to retirement lump sum payment, and even to the public pension
payment after retirement.

Unlimited contract regular employees and limited contract employees
Sato (2012) categories long-term employees as ‘unlimited contract regular employees’(mugentei shain), and employees whose work location and job type as limited ‘limited
contract regular employees’ (gentei shain). He defines the former as a work contract wherecompanies can order job content, work relocation and also overtime work. This naming
does indicate the difficulties of balancing work and family, and may be another way tolook at Hamaguchi’s description of ‘membership work’. In Europe and the U.S., transfersand changes of job content, even within the same company, are typically only realized
after an individual applies for the position and is hired for the position. Such is not thecase under Japanese long-term employment.
The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW 2012) ‘Study Group Report on
Various Forms of Regular Employees’ for which Sato was the chair, identified the numberof the ‘so-called regular employees’ (or unlimited contract regular employees), in a survey
conducted at companies with over 300 employees. In this survey, according to hisclassification, Sato found that among the long-term employees, more than 40% were‘unlimited contract regular employees’, and less than 30% were ‘limited contract regular
employees’, from the viewpoint of work hours and work location, while the rest cannot beclassified as such. If classified by gender, the survey found that more than 70% of
unlimited contract regular employees were men, 45% of limited contract regular employ­
ees were men. On the other hand, survey found that 70% of non-standard workers who
are not ‘long-term employees’ were women.
The ratio of female employees clearly increased as work location, job, and working
hours become more well defined. At the same time, their annual income decreased. While
more than 70% of unlimited contract regular employees earned annual incomes of¥4 million or more, this figure was less than 50% for limited contract regular employees.
For non-standard employees, the figure was only just over 10%. This shows that wages in8

N. NAGASE

Japan are defined not so much by occupation but more by whether one has an unlimited
regular employee contract and also on whether one is long-term employee or not.
This survey found that the disadvantages of the work style felt by limited contract
regular employees were ‘low salary’ (nearly 50%) and ‘lack of prospects for promotion andadvancement’ (25%). On the other hand, ‘Worries about relocation’ (35%) was the mostcommon disadvantage felt by unlimited contract regular employees. As many as 60% ofthem replied that they wished to convert to a contract with limited work location, but 60%of them hoped that this would not result in lowering their wages or promotion prospects.
In other words, ‘unlimited contract regular employees’ are dissatisfied with companyordered transfers, but don’t want lower wages or promotion. The Abe administration’s
Work Style Reform policies enacted in 2019 put clear overtime hour cap on all employees
for the first time, and introduced the ‘equal pay for equal work’ principle, but Japanesecourts seem to define ‘equal work’ as not only pertaining to occupation and work content,
but also to how much the work contract expects company-initiated job rotation and relocation.

Job descriptions not clearly defined in Japanese-style employment
Ono (2016) points to ‘overtime work as norm’ (tsukiai zangyō) as a phenomenon unique toJapan under strong group ties and hierarchical relationships. He also notes that job
descriptions are not clearly defined, so that job rotation can be flexibly handled.
Furthermore, the spousal tax deduction given to the household head reflects the sociallyaccepted notion that wives are to work so long as it does not impact on their housework
duties, which strengthens the traditional division of labour. Since Japanese employment
practices are based on the complementarity of various systems, he says there will be pain
and resistance on the part of both individuals and companies before a new equilibrium
can be achieved to remedy long working hours.
In sum, while there has been much discussion about the need to reform Japanese-style
employment, it is still not easy for employees to achieve work and life balance. While there
has been a significant increase in the use of childcare leave, it is mainly women who takechildcare leave and work shorter hours for the sake of childcare.

Social insurance regulation favouring a gendered division of labour
Social insurance premium exemption of low-earning spouses
In addition to employment practices, social insurance has also given explicit and special
consideration for dependent spouses of salaried workers. Dependent housewives ofsalaried workers do not have to pay their social insurance premiums on medical insurance
but are nonetheless given the full entitlement of medical insurance as dependents. As tothe old-age public pension for employees, dependent housewives are given even more
special consideration called ‘category 3’ – they are exempted from social insurance
payment but are given the full Basic Pension Entitlement.
This reform to give Basic Pension Entitlement to housewives without their payment
came about in 1985. The reform was brought about to settle different challenges then,but the concept of ‘Japanese-style welfare society’ advocated from around the end of the

ASIA PACIFIC BUSINESS REVIEW

91970s by the LDP might have given it support. Hori (1981) characterized the ‘Japanesestyle social welfare concept’ of the time as denying the Western-style social welfare state,emphasizing self-help efforts, welfare by families, mutual assistance in local communities,
and corporate welfare. As for corporate welfare, he cites lifetime employment andseniority-based wages as providing life income security, retirement benefits, corporate
pensions, health insurance unions, and unemployment insurance benefits. As for welfare
by families, he points out that the 1978 White Paper on Health and Welfare extolled theextended family as an ‘informal asset of welfare’. Osawa (1993), on the other hand,described the 1986 and 1987 White Papers on Welfare as ‘family-oriented, big businessoriented, and male-oriented’, noting that it was men who were to be the model insured
workers, and not women.
The spouses of salaried workers were seen at the time of the reform as the ones who
would take care of housework, childcare, and elderly care. Thus, the reform of 1985 indeed
encouraged women to stay as low-earning housewives. This social security system con­tinues to this day as discussed in Ochiai (2015). It is not in line with the changing
consciousness of today’s youth and the economic demands for women’s employment.
It is also not in line with the changing Japanese family. In 1985, among households withfamily members 65 years old or older, 44.8% lived in three generation households and13.1% were single-person households. In 2022, three generation households constituted
only 7.1%, and single-person households 31.8%. In 1985, only 1.25 million elderly lived
alone, but the number in 2022 was 8.9 million. Women are no longer an ‘informal asset of
welfare’ where they stay at home to take care of the elderly.
The system favouring dependent spouses was questioned in 2000–2001 whena ‘Changing Lifestyle of Women and Pension Committee’ was organized at the Ministryof Health and Welfare, for which the author was one of the committee members. At thetime, all those aged 20 to 59 who were not covered by employee insurance weremandated to pay the pension premium to the Peoples’ Pension, including students andunemployed, while low-earning housewives were exempted but given the same Basic
Pension Entitlement since the employee pension was paying the premium for them. The
committee gathered a considerable audience, and was given widespread media cover­age, signifying high public interest. Six options to change the Category 3 were proposed(Ministry of Labour Health and Welfare 2001), but the Commission did not reach an
agreement, and the Ministry did not implement any of the options, except in 2004,
when pension splitting upon divorce was introduced based on the discussion.

Annual income targeting of married women that keeps part-time wages low, andproposed changes
According to Statistics Bureau’s Employment Status Survey of 2022, among 29 million
women in the labour force, around 14 million were non-standard female workers, and twoout of three of them, that is, 9.3 million females, earned below ¥1.5 million, or roughly$10,000 a year, which is not enough to make one’s own living. Of these, 70% werehousewives. The remaining one third are singles, but as shown in Figure 3, they mostly
earned below ¥2.5 million a year, which is not enough for single living, so many suchsingles often share housing with their parents. According to the same statistics, as shownin Figure 3, 58.3% and 58.6% of married non-standard workers who earned ¥0.5 to

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Figure 3. Income targeting among non-standard female employees. Source: Statistics Office.
Employment Status Survey 2022.

1.0 million and ¥1.0–1.5 million respectively replied that they intentionally adjust theirwork hours so that their annual income is below a certain income threshold to takeadvantage of tax and social security tax exemption rules. Non-marrieds can also become
dependent on their parents and can be exempted from medical insurance, but they are
not given entitlement to the public pension as dependent wives unless they pay theirown premium. Therefore, such work adjustment and income targeting are smaller for
non-married women as shown in Figure 3.
Companies were not required to include non-standard workers in employee social
insurance if their work hours were below 75% of regular employees. Many werehousewives who got their social security entitlement as ‘dependents’ through theirspouse. Both companies and wives took advantage of this rule, so that they were both
exempted from social security fees. Today, however, MHLW is trying to include morepart-time workers in employee social insurance, to collect social security tax fromhousewives but also to extend social protection to different workers. Starting fromlarger firms in 2016, workers with more than 20 hours over the 1.06 million yen
threshold were mandated to be included in employee insurance. The company size
will be lowered to firms with more than 50 employees in October 2024. The Kishida
government is now trying to further include more employees by mandating smaller-

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11

sized firms, and to extend to even shorter work-week workers. However, a survey by
JILPT showed that 48.1% of Category 3 workers avoided the social security levy reformof 2016 by shortening their working hours, while such work hour adjustment was
about half as much for workers who did not have Category 3 benefit (JILPT 2022). The
same survey also showed that about one third of firms replied that they changed
human resource management. Of these, two out of three had tried to shorten work
hours to avoid the social insurance tax levy, while more than half replied that they
tried to extend work hours of workers to whom the firm had to pay social security tax.
Finally, again, the discussion for change of Category 3 is on the table of theGovernment Pension Committee. As noted above, while employers have benefitted
from the current system as they can employ housewives without paying any social
insurance premium, more companies are now concerned about future labour shortages.
Keeping housewives on low wages and making them work short hours is not sustainable
under the declining labour force trend.
According to the Social Security Council Public Pension Actuarial Committee, 2023,
about 30% of women in the 40–44, 45–49, and 50–54 age groups are covered by Category
3, and account for 70% of the Category 3 insured. Analysis shows that when the youngest
child gets older – from under 6 to 6–9 and to 10–12 years old – the working hours ofmarried women increase and more women hit the income targeting threshold, so they
adjust their work hours and the ‘annual income threshold’ becomes a constraint (Nagase
2018b). In other words, the current Category 3 coverage system is constraining theworking hours of middle-aged wives.
Kenjō and Kenjō (2022), discuss the possibility of levying the social insurance tax only
on employers so that housewives who are exempted from social insurance tax can choose
whether to have additional pension for themselves or not. Koreeda (2023a, 2023b) discusslevying the social insurance tax for short working week workers to both employers andemployees, while retaining some benefit to housewives who had been exempted from allthese taxes. Both Kenjō and Koreeda propose reforms while keeping Category 3 insurance
for housewives. Nagase (2023) on the other hand advocates increasing coverage toshort hour workers, but taking steps to abolish Category 3, creating support and credit
for those who are out of work or low paid due to child care (the proposal extends thebenefit not only to dependents of salaried workers, but also to single mothers and wivesof self-employed), and also re-defining what ‘equal work’ is in the government’s ‘equalpay for equal work’ principle. The present definition of ‘equal work’ in Japanese law not
only looks at actual work content, but also to the implicit employment contract ofovertime work and job rotation (Kanki 2018), as noted above, meaning that two workers
doing the same tasks are not necessarily deemed to be doing ‘equal work’. Unless moreweight is given to what women – often working under ‘limited work contract’ and on‘non-standard work contract’ – actually do, the gender wage gap will not be easily
narrowed.

Changing attitudes and gender role choice among youth
The younger generation no longer supports a strong gender-role division of labour within
the family. The ‘Marriage and Family in the Era of 100 Years of Life Survey’ (2022) was12

N. NAGASE

commissioned by the Gender Equality Bureau of the Cabinet Office for the 2022 White
Paper on Gender Equality, shows an interesting change of attitudes.
First, the desire to marry is found to be lower among singles: more than 60% of womenand nearly 60% of men in their 20s would like to get married, but the desire declines withage. Even lower is the ideal number of children for singles. Twenty four percent of womenand 31% of men in their 20s said they wish to have no children, and an additional 14% of
women and 15% of men said they don’t know. Considering that society cannot sustain
itself without nurturing the next generation, we should reflect on why 40% of young
people responded like this.
We also see a rapid change in the ideal way to take care of infants aged 2 or 3. For
the age group in their 20s, more than 50% of males and over 40% of females
answered that their ideal is to use childcare leave and work return so that bothhusband and wife can have long-term employment. On the other hand, for those in
their 60s, the comparable ratio thought that husbands working full-time and wives
staying at home was ideal.
The working styles and family formation of the younger generation are changing in
response to these attitudes, yet changes are slow; family formation has actually stagnated,and childbearing has continued to decline.

How can we change the gender-role division of labour in the family?
Looking back at men and women now in their 60s who entered the labour market in the
1980s, ‘Japanese-style employment’ was in full swing. It was taken for granted thatwomen would quit work after marriage or childbirth, and even if they remained in thecompany, the wage gap between men and women was assumed to be exceptionallylarge. In 1985, the Equal Employment Opportunity Law was enacted, but it only resulted
in the renaming of female jobs as ‘slow-track jobs (ippanshoku)’ and male jobs as ‘careertrack jobs (sogoshoku)’, and did not change Japanese employment practices by seriously
considering the recruitment and training of women who would have children to fullybuild their human capital. Although the Equal Employment Opportunity Law wasstrengthened, many women were not hired for career-track positions in the same way
as men, and even those women who were hired for career-track positions often left theworkforce for family reasons and also by questioning the high commitment to company
in the male dominated community. What followed was a shift to non-regular employ­ment, including among single people and young people, and since 2000 the number of
non-standard workers has increased substantially without any major changes in the rules
for regular employees.
It was after 2007 to 2010 that women returning to work after taking childcare leaveincreased and then accelerated. However, this was mainly for regular employees of large
companies, and the increasing number of non-regular employees were not subject tosupport and training, even at large companies. Since then an increasing number ofcompanies have consciously increased the number of women in career-track positions.
However, it is difficult to say that the system has changed sufficiently when it comes tohow employers incorporate child rearing, which is an important part of human life, while
also building their own human capital. In addition, the preferential treatment for

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13

households with dependent spouses does not provide sufficient support for family
formation, but this point has not yet been seriously reviewed.
In post-COVID society, economic support for households with children and social
support in the form of flexible working hours and childcare time should be provided toboth male and female employees, including part-time workers, and in addition, lowincome households should receive economic support. The same is true for households
that need to provide full-time care. Systems that encourage women to remain as depen­
dents should be abolished, but at the same time, more flexibility in work hours should be
introduced, as well as support to re-enter the labour market and better childcare support.

Conclusion: proposal for additional change
Sato et al. (2022) point out that unless the work style of unlimited contract regular
employees is reformed, the increase of limited contract regular workers will only increase
the stratification of regular employees. Although new employment styles are emerging,so far stratification is undeniable.
There are still 7.5 million Category 3 females who are exempted from any social security
premium payment and are given premium payment from the employee group as a whole.
These women do work when their children grow older, but they often are poorly paid, andthey even try to adjust their work hours so that they can keep their income below the 1 to
1.3 million yen thresholds. This system has to be fundamentally changed. I propose toexpand childcare leave entilement and at the same time reduce beneficial treatment ofhousewives on social insurance when their youngest child is over certain age, such as age
9 so that fewer women make working hour adjustments to obtain social security premium
exemption when they indeed can work more hours. I also propose to implement policies
to increase the hourly wages of non-standard workers, and to include them in employee
insurance. At the same time, we should change the understanding of the ‘equal pay for
equal work’ principle, so that ‘Equal Work’ is what one does at the time of comparison,
instead of being in a ‘membership’ employment relationship or not. ‘Unlimited contract’employment itself should be changed if the government truly seeks higher involvementof fathers in childrearing.
Overall, the government is trying to change social policy and family policy froma breadwinner model to an earner-and-carer model. However, the change proposed stilllacks ambition. Large change needs coordination of different interests. The government
should take stronger leadership to bring about this change.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding
This work was supported by the The Research Institute of Science and Technology for Society(RISTEX) of the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) (grant number JPMJRX19H4; PI Nobuko
Nagase); Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research Fund for the Promotion of Joint International Research(Fostering Joint International Research (B)) (grant number 19KK0042; PI Nobuko Nagase).

14

N. NAGASE

Notes on contributor
Nobuko Nagase is Professor of Labour Economics and Social Policy at Ochanomizu University,
Tokyo. Her comparative research interests include wage structure and work choice, labour market
regulation and social security, tax and other institutional effects on work and gender, marital
behaviour and child-birth timing. She has published in Japanese Economic Review, Asian Economic
Policy Review, Demographic Research Econometric Review and The Quarterly of Social Security
Research, among others.

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