Aya, a middle-level manager in a corporate firm in Tokoyo, makes a quarterly assessment of her team’s performance. During all the years of her job, she received excellent remarks and reviews and met her goals well. Despite all this, she noticed a pattern: her male colleagues got more rapid and early promotions than their female counterparts. In other news, Emi, managing three low-paid jobs in Osaka, has high hopes about pursuing her higher studies, but her responsibilities at home, her kids, and ailing parents make her feel trapped.
Aya and Emi are two faces of Japan’s gender and workplace inequality dilemma between the glass ceiling effect and the sticky floor effect. Aya feels hurdled by an invisible barrier to the growth and progress of women in her organization. Aya’s life reflects the barriers that society has put in for women in certain managerial and organizational roles. Emi, on the other hand, feels entrapped in the cycle of inequality in pay and low salary and has learned helplessness in her life.
This takes me to Martin Seligman’s learned helplessness theory, which explains this issue as a learned behavior of women to feel trapped in life and limit opportunities for their growth. The main reasons can be rooted in social and economic issues; however, a need for quick action takes birth to one of the world’s biggest economies.
Japan is a nation based on advanced technology and a rich cultural legacy. However, the country grapples with the biggest hindrance to human development. The systemic issues like the glass ceiling effect and sticky floor effect, being somewhat polar concepts, highlight the gender discrepancies and disparities in Japan. The current article will shed light on the aforementioned issues in Japan and provide certain solutions to the existing problems in the country. Let’s start by conceptualizing them.
Glass Ceiling Effect
The glass ceiling effect is an invisible barrier that obstructs women who are best suited for the jobs from taking up leadership and white-collar roles despite their competence and qualifications. In 2023, it was reported by the Gender Bureau of Japan that only 12.9 percent of women in Japan serve in leadership roles and managerial positions, indicating low development in gender equity.
The Deolitte’s Women in the Boardroom Report of 2023 stated that women occupied a mere 9.6% of board seats in Japanese firms, whereas the worldwide average stands at 26.7%. As of 2024, only 10% of the parliamentary seats in Japan’s House of Representatives were held by women. Although leaders like Yuriko Koike, the governor of Tokyo, have emerged, women’s representation in politics remains low.
Moreover, the UNESCO Science Report stated that women comprise just 16% of researchers in Japan, significantly below the OECD average of 30%. Societal norms typically assign the responsibility of caregiving and household duties to women, which restricts their career advancement. Japan’s well-known culture of overwork disproportionately impacts women, who face challenges in balancing work and family obligations. The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2024 ranks Japan at 118th out of 146 countries, underscoring its difficulties in achieving gender equality.
Sticky Floor Effect
In my view, a significant challenge that Japan is confronting is the sticky floor effect, which confines a considerable number of women in the workforce to low-paying, low-mobility jobs, mainly within the informal and part-time sectors. Over 55% of working women in Japan hold non-regular positions (such as part-time, temporary, or contract work), in contrast to just 22% of men (Statistics Bureau of Japan, 2024). These positions provide lower pay, fewer benefits, and limited opportunities for career advancement.
In Japan, women earn about 23.5% less than men, marking one of the highest gender wage gaps among OECD nations. Additionally, women devote 3.5 times more hours to unpaid domestic responsibilities and caregiving than men, which hinders their ability to pursue higher-paying jobs. However, there has been little progress observed in 2024. Women are largely employed in fields such as retail, hospitality, and caregiving, where salaries are considerably lower than those in male-dominated sectors like technology and finance.
The insufficient availability of training and upskilling opportunities continues to reinforce the cycle of low-wage employment. On the flip side, all these issues can be combated using a very inclusive approach toward women’s empowerment, gender equity, and equality at multiple forums. A few recommendations are in the next section.
Recommendations
Being an optimist and a great advocate of women’s empowerment, I want to use this platform to recommend some solutions for Japan to break the glass ceiling and reduce the floor stickiness. First and foremost is public awareness and the elimination of stereotypical societal attitudes. Secondly, the policymakers can bring in policies with balanced corporate strategies and approved legal frameworks.
For instance, a merit-based approach towards recruitment and evaluation of leadership roles and fixing market-based payment structures regardless of gender can be good steps for Japan. The workforce participation of women can be increased by providing ease of access to childcare centers. An introduction of paternal leaves can be a step in the right direction for the fathers to share the responsibility of babysitting.
Businesses should promote campaigns and awareness programs to shift their focus from part-time and multiple jobs to single and full-time jobs. Similarly, a cultural shift can be a panacea to gender disparities in Japan. This can be done by inculcating inclusiveness in institutions and organizations so as to boost economic growth, lower the gender gap in the country, and make every segment of society contribute to the development of the country.
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She is a clinical psychologist and author with over six years of experience in freelance writing, specializing in mental health, social issues, and global affairs. She co-authored L’Art de Vivre, a book on positive psychology, and contributed to flood relief efforts in 2022. She also qualified the CSS Special Competitive Examination in 2023. Through her work, she is committed to promoting resilience, raising public awareness, and fostering informed discourse by combining psychological insight with socio-political analysis.