Photo/Illutration Prime Minister Fumio Kishida attends a meeting of the government task force on June 5. (Takeshi Iwashita)

A government task force assigned to close the gender wage gap in Japan, which is much larger than other major economies, decided to call on five industries for corrective action plans.

The team is focusing on industries with particularly egregious gender disparities: financial services and insurance; food manufacturing; retailing; electric and precision machinery; and air transportation.

“All relevant ministries and agencies will work together to advance necessary measures to achieve structural wage increases and empower women by reforming work environments to eliminate male-female wage gaps,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said at a meeting of the task force on June 5.

The trade associations of the five industries will be asked to start developing action plans by the end of the year and to publish those plans at an early date, officials said.

The plans are expected to include specific goals for the proportion of woman as new recruits, managers and directors, as well as industry-wide initiatives to reduce wage disparities.

At the June 5 meeting, Kishida asked government ministries and agencies to support industry officials in developing effective action plans and undertaking their initiatives.

COMMON PROBLEMS

Since last year, companies with a certain number of employees have been required to disclose gender-based wage gaps.

The task force, chaired by Wakako Yata, a special adviser to the prime minister, was set up in April.

The ministries and agencies interviewed officials of the five industries under their jurisdiction and analyzed the reasons for the significant wage gaps.

The task force identified many issues common among these industries, such as shorter employment terms for female employees and fewer promotions to management positions.

The team found that many industry officials took it for granted that men and women hold different types of jobs, such as women being in non-career positions and men being in managerial positions.

The task force also found problems unique to particular industries.

Among major financial institutions, women account for only 10 to 20 percent of career-track employees, while they hold more than 90 percent of non-career positions.

The task force found that many industry officials perceive over-the-counter services as women’s work, while female employees often avoid career positions due to required transfers and long work hours.

In the airline industry, women account for a scant 1.7 percent of pilots, while 99.8 percent of flight attendants are female, which was attributed to preconceptions of pilots being men and flight attendants being women.

Female flight attendants often struggle to balance their careers with child care, since they are frequently away from home, sometimes overseas.

As a result, many of them leave their jobs after having children, resulting in fewer years of employment for women than men.

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