Japan is struggling to promote women to leadership posts. The data showed why. (Image via The Japan Times)

Survey: Only 42% Japanese companies promote women to managerial posts

Japan pledges to give women more opportunities as men; the data showed otherwise. In July 2020, Teikoku Databank Ltd held a survey involving 23,680 companies across Japan, and 11,732, or 49.5 percent, responded. According to the private survey, the number of Japanese companies that promote its female employees to managerial posts decreased to 42.6%, a 7.4 point decrease compared to the result in 2019. Teikoku Databank stated that the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic made these companies neglect women's promotion issues, and paying more attention to maintaining overall employment instead.

From all respondents, 41% of them said that they did not actively offer any promotion to women. The percentage went up by 7 points compared to 2019. Meanwhile, about 16.4% of them did not know whether they actively offered female employees any leadership promotion or not, going up by 0.4% compared to 2019's figure.

For the respondents saying that they actively promoted promotion to female employees, almost 72% of them allowed the companies to utilize all human resources regardless of their genders, which led to the change of perception toward women, said the 30%.

However, the survey showed that averagely, only 7.8% of women hold managerial positions. While it went up by 0.1 points compared to 2019's figure, it fell far behind the target set by the Japanese government. But, do companies really want to give women a chance to lead? Only 21.7% said so, a 1.9 point decrease compared to 2019. Retailers, real estate, and service sectors want women to lead more, while construction and transportation shook their heads. Teikoku Databank concluded the survey by saying that a conducive working environment for female employees is important.

Source: https://bit.ly/3mlTClZ