TMCnet News

OECD raps Japan's female underemployment as waste of human resources+
[July 02, 2008]

OECD raps Japan's female underemployment as waste of human resources+


(Japan Economic Newswire Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) PARIS, July 2_(Kyodo) _ The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said in its latest Employment Outlook report released Tuesday that Japan's underemployment of well-educated women is "a considerable waste of valuable human resources."



In a note giving information relevant to the employment situation in Japan attached to the 2008 edition of its annual report, the OECD noted that female employment in Japan still lags behind that of men.

In Japan, only 67.4 percent of women aged 25-54 have a job, about 15 percentage points less than the best performing OECD countries such as Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland, it said.


This stands in sharp contrast to the labor market situation of their male counterparts, as almost 93 percent of them have a job, the highest employment rate in the OECD after Iceland and Mexico, according to the report.

Not only are prime-age women in Japan as educated as men, they are also among the most educated in the OECD after Finland and Canada, the report said, noting that in 2005 42.5 percent of them had a tertiary education qualification against 28.5 percent on average in the OECD area.

"Their underemployment is a considerable waste of valuable human resources, which needs to be addressed urgently, notably in the actual context of population ageing," the report said.

It pointed out that discrimination in the labor market plays a significant role, among other things, as determinants of low Japanese female employment.

Noting that, compared with many other OECD countries, Japan was late to introduce national legislation that firmly bans gender discrimination in the workplace, the report encouraged Japan to further improve such legislation.

"Even if legal rules have been strengthened recently, Japan would benefit from further improving its anti-discrimination legislation that still lags behind OECD best practices," the report said.

Copyright ? 2008 Kyodo News International, Inc.

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]