Japan plans to toughen its gender equality law in an effort to encourage women to stay in the workforce as the population begins to shrink, a government official said on Friday.
The Health and Welfare Ministry will propose an amendment to the 1986 law that would ban employers from treating women unfavourably because they are pregnant or have young children, the Nihon Keizai newspaper said.
Employers would also be prevented from firing a woman who was pregnant, or who had a child under a year old, unless they could prove that the employee's family situation was not the reason, the paper said.
The current equal opportunity laws are not so effective, women are still paid 1/3 of what men are paid on average.
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Is that right? Only 1/3 as much? Or was it 1/3 less? I'm guessing it was a typo.
Everything I've seen on Japan says that women make 1/2 as much, not 1/3.
But it's really comparatively low to the US and other Western/Developed nations...