Japan offered companies money to promote women, but it didn't work

The government allocated £662,000 for the programme but it went unused.

Target: Japan's female workforce remains one of the most under-exploited in the developed world

Toru Hanai/Reuters

Zlata Rodionova1 October 2015

Not a single company signed up the Japanese government's scheme to promote more women to senior positions, despite there being a financial incentive to do so, officials have said.

Companies were given targets for training and hiring women into senior roles in exchange for a reward of up to 300,000 yen (£1,654).

But the 120 million yen allocated to the programme for the 500 companies expected to apply went unused, according to a spokeswoman for the health ministry.

Some companies said the criteria to qualify for the programme were too hard to meet.

The ministry has promised to ease the requirements and double the payments, the Japan Times reports.

The lack of applicants is a failure for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has set a goal for women to hold 30% senior jobs in all fields by 2020, up from just over 8% last year in private companies.

Abe also vowed to push initiatives for women’s empowerment at a United Nations meeting in New York on Sunday.

“Japan will take further action and initiatives to protect women’s rights and promote the engagement of women in society and to solve issues to achieve gender equality, development and peace through empowerment,” he told the meeting.

Japan's female workforce remains one of the most under-exploited in the developed world.

When women have their first child, 70% of them stop working for a decade or more, compared with just 30% in America, according to the Economist.

A senior economist at JPMorgan Securities said one solution might be fining companies reluctant to hire women.

“The intention of encouraging more women into the workforce is good. Even so, companies may be more inclined to promote women if they were fined for lack of effort, rather than being given subsidies,” said Masamichi Adachi, senior economist at JPMorgan Securities Japan.

The number Japanese women in work reached a record high since 1953, according to data from the Japanese Cabinet Office. The Japanese payroll now includes 27.72 million female full-time and part-time employees.

Women represent just over 43% of Japan’s labour force. This compares with 46.5% in the US, 45.9% in UK and 43.7% in China, according to World Bank data.