This month's featured article
Why Do Working Environment Improvement Measures Contribute Little to Female Labor Participation?
LIU YangFellow, RIETI
March 8 is designated by the United Nations as International Women’s Day. In Japan, many initiatives and activities related to women’s rights have been conducted, and in particular, many policy measures to promote female labor participation have been implemented. It is said that female labor participation in Japan has been hampered by an unfavorable working environment for women, especially due to the long working hours and gender inequality. Abe (2011) demonstrated that the Act on Equal Opportunity and Treatment between Men and Women in Employment has not increased regular jobs for women. Kohara and Maity (2017) found that work-life balance measures also have made very small contributions to female labor participation. In short, many studies pointed out that the policy measures taken in Japan to improve the working environment for women have made only small contributions to female labor participation in the country.
On the other hand, the female labor participation rate in Japan has been rising steadily in recent years. In addition to efforts to improve working environments in general, there has been a series of policies that have promoted the empowerment of women, women’s economic independence and men’s active involvement in the household and community affairs, as outlined in the Basic Policies Related to Women 2024, which places a high value on women’s participation in the labor market, , potentially contributing to the rise in female labor participation rate. Therefore, this article introduces research that examines whether or not the failure of the working environment improvement measures to contribute significantly to female labor participation, which has been pointed out by previous studies, is attributable to Japan’s cultural values.
To read the full text:
https://www.rieti.go.jp/en/columns/a01_0748.html
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