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POPULATION-JAPAN: Protecting Working Mothers’ Rights

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Sep 19 2006 (IPS) - Kaori Tokoro, 37, gave up the job she held down for 12 years with a medium-sized interior design company when she became pregnant six years ago.

Now this mother of two sons, who is a graduate from a design school in San Francisco, says she has mixed feelings about her decision to become a homemaker.

”There was hidden pressure in my office for me to resign. In some ways I understand this as employees usually put in more than ten hours a day at the office – which is difficult to do as a mother. But as the children grow up I am worried for the future,” she says.

Women like Tokoro, intelligent, qualified and hardworking who give up their careers to start families, are now the focus of a new employment policy by the Japanese government that is struggling to boost birth rates and avoid a looming labour crunch that threatens economic growth.

”Working women,” said Kuniko Inoguchi, Japan’s first minister for population and gender equality, at a recent seminar organised in liaison with the Norwegian government, ‘’need to be able to keep their jobs even after childbirth. The Japanese government is taking steps to ensure this can happen.”

Currently, Japan provides child-care leave with reduced salaries for one year. The labour ministry reports only 0.5 percent of male employees in the private sector took paternity leave in 2005, down from 0.56 percent from the previous year. The ministry has set a target of 10 percent.

Indeed, in June this year, the Japanese government’s white paper on gender equality singled out the need to expand support to women reentering the labour market, after giving birth or raising children.

New measures were outlined in the white paper such as special sections under the slogan, “Mother’s Hello Work”, geared to help mothers find jobs, provide job skill seminars for women who have temporarily left work and also instruct small and medium companies to draft action plans to help working parents such as encouraging fathers to take child-care leave.

The new measures follow close on the heels of a report released by the health, labour and welfare ministry that estimates that Japan’s labour force could shrink by 7.29 million workers in 2020 to about 60.37 million.

The cabinet office of gender equality, however, says the shrinkage could be eased to 1.58 million if the gender gap in the labour force participation rates is halved – currently women trail men by about 27 percent.

Analysts say the new thrust led by the government is highly welcome in Japan where the corporate world remains male dominated and women have long been relegated to the role of side players.

”We have been demanding that the government establish regulations that will establish shorter working hours, a criteria which we think is crucial to allow workers to be able to have children,” said Ken Yoshida, an official at Rengo, Japan’s largest labour union.

He points out that the current 60-hour work week discourages women and men from starting families as they find it hard to juggle both careers and child rearing. ”Establishing new day care centres is only part of the solution. What we need is a workplace that respects family life,” he explained.

In fact, a 2005 survey by the ministry of internal affairs shows 13.2 percent of the non-labour force among women between the age of 30 -24 years wanted to work but could not find suitable employment work because they could not put in the necessary hours at most companies.

Yet another pessimistic survey by the National Women’s Education Centre showed that Japanese fathers, who spend the longest working hours at 49 hours per week, spend an average of 3.1 hours per weekday with their children.

‘’The choice for women in Japan is between starting a family or holding on to their career. This is not fair,” explained Mariko Yamaguchi, spokesperson for Ishikawa Memorial Association, one of Japan’s oldest feminist groups.

Even in companies that recruit many women, such as life insurance companies, the decision to become a mother can be daunting, says Kyoko Nakanishi, a sales agent.

Nakanishi, 44, wakes up at 5 am to prepare the day’s meals for her family before she leaves for work. Her elder daughter now helps with the washing, done after 10 o’clock each night as her husband returns close to midnight most weekdays.

Experts contend the rising number of part-timers – 40 percent of female workers between the age of 25 and 34 years- makes it more difficult to take maternity leave.

‘’As a part-timer with no welfare guarantees, I quit my job as head waitress to have my son last year,” said Kaori Ikeda, 32. Not being able to rely only on her husband’s salary, Ikeda has to find a new job this month, a situation that has made her give up plans for a second child.

That situation is exactly what the government hopes to avoid.

This June, the Japanese Diet (parliament) passed a revised Equal Employment Opportunity Law, effective from April 2007, that bans, among other issues, giving disadvantageous treatment to employees who become pregnant or who give birth.

”The law will at least enable women with children to protect their jobs by being able to file lawsuits if they are asked to quit,” pointed out Yamaguchi.