Reducing Gender Inequality: What Does It Mean for Japanese Corporations?

Abstract

Among social media and scholars’ reviews, gender inequality exists in Japan’s corporates in a format of the wage gap and unbalanced employment ratio between genders. The key drivers of such phenomenon include historical culture, social norm, and employment mechanism. The traditional culture assigns the responsibility of family care to females. Women workers who received high education still face the same prejudice in the workplace. Such a situation makes them stay in a challenging employment environment. By contrast, the male takes on duties to support the family financially. However, such gender-biased allocation causes a series of problems such as discrimination and low efficiency. Given Japan’s significance in the global economy, these impacts brought by gender inequality push Japan’s core social value away from the world’s typical idea. By considering such effects, this chapter discusses a path to reduce the level of inequality between genders in the social employment mechanism. Firstly, the study introduces the background of Japanese corporate culture, then discusses the circumstances that women employees face in the workplace, digs key reasons that lead to the existing problems, and explores the solution to such social issue. Besides, the study applies the theory of corporate social responsibility to explain the current issues in Japan’s labour market. This research enables us to deeply understand why gender equity is essential in the whole socialeconomic structure.