LABOUR-JAPAN: Women Shortchanged in Part-time Work

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Feb 19 2001 (IPS) - Hiroko Mimiura, a 49-year-old mother of three, considers herself a victim of Japan’s changing labour situation.

Mimura works seven hours a day and follows a six-day week schedule as a part-time receptionist at a major hotel. She is paid yen 1,200 (10 U.S. dollars) per hour.

“I have no other benefits, no paid vacation, or bonus. When I asked for a full-time contract that includes these allowances I was turned down, because the manager said the hotel could not afford it,” she explains.

Mimura’s situation represents the worsening climate for women workers who make up more than 70 percent of the growing part-time labour market in Japan, according to the Health and Welfare Ministry.

Part-timers make up 22 percent of the workforce in this country of 130 million people, and their numbers have doubled over the last decade to reach almost 12 million.

Like Mimura, who was a full-time homemaker until she started work 10 years ago when her youngest child entered junior-high school, droves of women are entering the job market but finding only low-paid, part-time jobs to their dissatisfaction.

“The situation is really getting worse as companies adjust to the effects of globalisation,” explains Midori Ito, who heads the Women’s Union, founded six years ago under the umbrella of the Zensoren, Japan’s largest trade union.

According to surveys conducted by the union, part-time women workers are paid only 51 percent of the wages earned by men despite doing similar jobs and putting in long hours of work.

“Women are discriminated against despite them working the same as men on the job,” she says.

Analysts point out that Japan has never treated women workers as equal to their male colleagues and the same trend is seen in the arena of part-time work.

Labour Ministry reports indicate that while women and men start work with equal pay, the gap begins to grow as they grow older.

A wage comparison between full-time workers in their forties reveal that women are paid 40 percent less than their male counterparts.

When it comes to promotions the situation is worse — women managers in companies comprised only a dismal 3 percent — according to a labour survey in 1999.

Still, labour analysts point out corporate restructuring has hit both men and women, because more companies are resorting to contract workers and away from the traditional lifelong system of employment Japan is known for.

But under this situation, it remains harder for women employees to gain a fair deal.

“Women have always been at the bottom of the list. But the focus is on growing unemployment among men,”says Chikako Ueno, a labour analyst. Unemployment among middle-aged men has grown close to 10 percent currently.

Critics complain that Japan has yet to ratify a 1994 International Labor Organisation convention that stipulates that part and full-time workers be treated equally in terms of wages, allowances, promotions and pensions, regardless of amounts of hours they work.

Japan’s tax system has traditionally endorsed the lower standards for women workers, points out Ito.

A pressing reason why women resort to part-time work is to earn a monthly salary of less than 129,900 yen or 1100 dollars — just below 130,000 (1101 dollars), which forms the base for paying taxes.

“The tax is adjusted to attract women to low-paying non-career jobs because they can be listed as dependents of their husbands,” Ito explains.

But Ito says the situation has changed drastically in the past decade in keeping with Japan’s slowing economy.

“More and more women need jobs to supply the family income. The days when the family could survive on one salary is over,” she explains.

To survive in the increasingly harsh labour environment, women have to resort to part-time jobs that demand much more responsibility than the job stipulates.

A woman wrote to the Zenzoren union asking for help on surviving in a job situation where she has been required to work six hours day plus overtime for the last 15 years. Despite this heavy work schedule, her salary is one-third that of full-time male colleagues.

In other words, Ito explains that the battle for better treatment for female labour remains an uphill struggle today.

She says while the declining birth rate has raised the importance of a female workforce in Japan, companies are endorsing labour patterns that prefer contract workers and a performance- based salary system that hits women for the worse.

According to the Labour Ministry, employees placed as regular workers were down 22.4 percent in 2000 from the previous year. “Women already juggle family and work. Against the toughening labor situation, they face trouble,” Ito says.