Female full-time workers’ pay in Japan starts below those of men in their early 20s and continues to fall further behind until their 50s in almost every industry, an Asahi Shimbun study showed.

Annual income was calculated based on wage data, including overtime pay and bonuses, published by the central government.

For the study, the income of men was set at 100 and was based on the labor ministry’s basic survey on wage structure for 2022.

For all industries, the average gap between men and women is 7 points in their early 20s.

The pay gap widens to 21 points among full-time workers in their 30s, 26 points in their 40s, and 30 points in their late 50s.

The change reflects increases in overtime pay and bonuses of men as they move up the corporate ladder.

The pay gap narrows when the workers are in their 60s because men’s wages tend to fall.

Only the industries of “medical, welfare” and “education, learning support” have some degree of equality in terms of wages among those in their early 20s, just after people start their careers, according to the study.

In that age group, women in “manufacturing” earned 87.0 compared with 100 for men. The figure for women was 87.3 in “transportation, postal service,” and 88.3 in “finance, insurance.”

The “finance, insurance” industry has the largest disparity throughout all ages. Women’s earnings were below half of men’s in their late 40s.

The government amended a ministerial ordinance regarding the law for women’s empowerment.

Since July 2022, it has required companies with 301 or more employees to disclose the wage gap between men and women.

According to the labor ministry, 14,577 of 17,370 companies in this category had disclosed the information by Jan. 19 this year. The average wage level for full-time female employees was 75.2 compared with 100 for men.

“There is a gender role division of labor in companies, with men holding the core and managerial positions in business, while women remain in supporting jobs,” said Miwako Ito of Mercer Japan, a human resources consulting firm.

“Disclosure of the wage gap can be a catalyst for creating a virtuous cycle that changes social norms through corporate change.”

Marui Group Co., which operates department stores and other businesses, disclosed for the first time that female employees’ wages were 70.9 compared with 100 for men.

A company representative said the figure was shocking because Marui has made an effort to train female employees for managerial positions for more than a decade.

“We have made such efforts, but there is still a considerable gap,” the representative said.

The company noted that only a small percentage of women at Marui were in management or were candidates for managerial positions.

Although Marui’s 4,400 employees were roughly evenly split between men and women, 80 percent of the top three employee grades were occupied by men. Women were mostly found in the lower three grades.

In addition, 99 percent of users of the “short-time” working program, which lowers wages in exchange for shorter working hours, were women. Men also received more “family allowance” and “overtime entitlement.”

At MUFG Bank, the overall wage level for women was 52.7. The figure, calculated for the first time, shocked employees, a representative said.

While many men hold “sogo-shoku” (career-track positions), which require transfers and have high wage levels, the majority of “ippan-shoku” (general positions) are occupied by women in the company.

MUFG Bank has continued this type of “employment by course” for a long time, which has placed many men in high-ranking positions, the representative said.

Starting in April 2025, MUFG Bank will unify the sogo-shoku and ippan-shoku career tracks.

It will also review the system of giving extra wages to employees who choose positions that come with an option to be transferred, which is common in the financial industry.

The banking group may replace it with a system of giving extra allowances to employees who are actually transferred.

These efforts could help to narrow the disparity, the representative said.

Among developed countries, Japan has a particularly large wage gap.

According to a 2022 survey by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the wage level for women in Japan was 78.7, far below the average of 87.9 among 38 OECD countries.

In Britain, Canada, Portugal and other countries, governments are trying to improve the situation by requiring private companies to disclose their wage amounts and the pay gaps.

“When we think about raising household incomes, the wage gap between men and women is another major theme,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said in his policy speech in January 2022.

Since then, the business community has eased its strong opposition to disclosing wage disparities.

At The Asahi Shimbun Co., the level of wages for full-time female employees was 85.1 in 2022 against a base of 100 for men.

The ratio of female managers was 13.5 percent as of May 2023.

These figures were published in the labor ministry’s database of companies promoting women’s empowerment.

(This article was written by Sawa Okabayashi, Misato Nakayama and Yoko Masuda.)