Creating a society where women can make full use of their skills and abilities and actively participate in various sectors in society has now become a priority in Japan.

The government plans to submit a bill to the upcoming extraordinary Diet session aimed at encouraging women to take a greater role in society.

One of the pillars of the planned legislation is to prompt businesses to draft action plans to promote women to higher positions.

Specific details to be incorporated into the bill are being discussed by a council of the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry. The proposed legislation’s effectiveness must be ensured by contriving ways to promote women’s activities, such as throwing government support behind businesses eager to make better use of their female employees.

According to a report released earlier this month by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), women with college degrees or higher academic achievements who have paid jobs account for no more than 69 percent of such women in Japan, ranking 31st among 34 OECD member countries. In the same category, the ratio of males with paid jobs stands at 92 percent, ranking second on the OECD list.

It is reasonable for the OECD report to note Japan’s failure to effectively utilize highly educated women with skills and abilities.

In Japan, about 60 percent of women quit work when they have their first baby. The major contributing factors for this include shortages of day care facilities and the corporate practice of working long hours, which makes balancing work and family life difficult for women.

After quitting a job, most women seldom have the opportunity to reenter the workforce as regular employees. Of the nation’s entire workforce, women account for a little over 40 percent, but more than half are part-timers and other nonregular employees. Opportunities for promotions and pay raises as well as on-the-job training are limited for women.

Career or family?

The lack of jobs that match women’s abilities seems to have discouraged them from seeking employment.

The ratio of women in managerial positions is about 10 percent, far lower compared to 30 percent to 40 percent in the United States and Europe. Forty percent of women promoted to managerial posts in Japan are unmarried, while 60 percent of women in managerial posts have no children. These figures indicate that women have been forced to choose between a career or family life.

The fact that highly educated women have not been utilized effectively is a great loss to society. The current situation where women are being deprived of opportunities to work because of such constraints as child-rearing, which limits their working hours, is a problem involving all women, irrespective of their educational backgrounds.

To improve this situation, it is imperative to change how workplaces operate as a whole, including the working style of men.

Attention should be paid to what should be done to enable both men and women to take charge of household chores and child-rearing, by reviewing what jobs entail and how they can be more advantageously assigned to reduce long working hours.

In addition, measures should be taken to allow for flexible working hours and working at home. Steps also are needed to promote the so-called limited regular employee system, or job-based regular employees, whose scope of duties, including working hours, is limited.

To prevent diversified types of work from becoming detrimental to career development, building effective personnel evaluation methods is key to fairly judge the results of work, by clarifying the scopes and goals of jobs for respective employees.

Effectively utilizing human resources with a wide variety of job experiences and values is indispensable to enhance the creativity of businesses and expedite the growth of business activities.

The new government-envisioned legislation should serve to help businesses deepen their understanding of the importance of effectively utilizing female employees.