RIGHTS-JAPAN: Pension Reforms Skim over Gender Inequality

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Jul 24 2003 (IPS) - Against the advice of her financial counsellor, Kyoko Tashiro, a 58-year-old homemaker, signed papers seeking a divorce this January.

”I decided to end my miserable life with a husband who cared for somebody else,” says the mother of two grown-up children, who now works as a part-time caretaker of a company dormitory. ”I have to make ends meet now, but at least my self-esteem is intact.”

Still, divorced women like Tashiro say they could use more help from social benefit schemes under the state. But in Japan, wives lose their right to their husband’s pension once they are divorced, no matter how long they had been married.

Now, this may well change under proposed revisions to the national pension system to be debated in the current session of the parliament or Diet.

The new proposal calls for splitting company retirement pensions in half – between husbands and wives who are full-time homemakers – based on the amount of premiums paid during the period the couple were together.

The plan is aimed at ”guaranteeing pension rights for full-time wives in recognition of their household work and other duties such as child care”, said a statement by the Health Welfare and Labour Ministry.

”The reform scheme is to help disadvantaged wives, judging from the rising number of divorces among middle-aged and elderly couples,” says Katsuhiro Asakawa, who is in charge of pensions at the ministry.

Divorces among midde-aged couples, those that occur after 20 years of marriage, numbered more than 45,000 in 2002, up from 20,000 in 1985.

Asakawa says the shared retirements plan will be included as part of pension reform for the fiscal year 2004, which begins in April that year. It is expected to benefit divorced, non-working women because they would be entitled to the same amount of pension they had when they were married.

That would help the women live more independently, making their post-retirement lives more financially stable. The new law also provides for court intervention if a couple cannot agree on the sharing scheme.

According to pension payments, the separate payment formula would result in welfare pension shares that average 350 U.S. dollars each when split equally between men and women. When added to the basic pension, the total amount payable will be almost 1,000 dollars.

Almost 12 million women are beneficiaries of the existing pension system, according to the ministry.

But while the new plan is a breakthrough for divorced housewives, it has drawn criticism from various quarters who say it does too little to shake up a system that needs far more drastic changes.

Male politicians from the ruling party, according to Asakawa, are opposed to the change and argue that it could prompt more divorces.

For their part, women’s groups say they are dissatisfied because the plan skirts the more important issue of promoting equal employment opportunities in work and in society – the pension sharing scheme applies only if the divorced woman does not work.

”By excluding working women, the plan works against helping women become financially independent of their husbands,” points out Fumiko Ishizu, a pensions consultant who says that majority of her clients are in fact women worried about their retirement.

”Japanese women are living longer and want to be financially stable. Policymakers must ensure that laws guarantee them well-paid jobs and equal pensions, which is not the case now,” she explains.

Despite Japan’s ratification of the U.N. Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women almost two decades ago, women, who comprise 50 percent of the labour force, are paid half the salaries of their male counterparts, according to statistics from the labour ministry.

In the part-time sector, where women account for 60 percent of the work force, the situation is worse. They get around 40 percent or less of their male counterparts’ pay.

Low pay translates into paltry pensions, which is why most women take up a government regulation that entitles working women to opt for their husbands’ pension, providing they give up their own, upon retirement.

Dependents also pay minimum pension premiums if they earn less than 1.3 million yen- 10,000 U.S. dollars – annually.

In short, the incentives offered under the Japanese system send the wrong signals when it comes to gender equality. For instance, men are entitled to generous benefits from their companies if their wives do not work – a condition that discourages women from pursuing a career.

Tashiro, a university graduate, is a case in point. She gave up a three-year job at a bank when she got pregnant because that was the norm among her generation. ”I began to do part-time work, teaching English, but limited my hours so my husband could continue to receive benefits. This system is not fair,” she says in an interview.

Yet at the same time, Japan’s economic recession has made working wives a necessity as husbands face pay cuts and the risk of unemployment, says Yoko Yamaguchi, a trade unionist and a member of the new committee proposing the pension proposal.

”The government may drag its feet in taking take steps to change social traditions, but economic reasons are pressing for promoting gender equally even in pension schemes,” she argues.