Japan's Mandatory Gender Pay Gap Disclosure (Act on Promotion of Women's Active Engagement, 2022)

Japan amended the Act on Promotion of Women's Participation and Advancement in the Workplace so that, from 8 July 2022, employers with more than 300 employees must publicly disclose their gender wage gap once a year, within three months of their fiscal year-end. Employers with 101–300 staff must additionally file a general action plan with prefectural labour bureaus. From January 2023, listed companies must also report the figure in their annual securities reports.
Disclosure covers the female-to-male wage ratio for the whole workforce and separately for regular (permanent, full-time) and irregular (part-time and fixed-term) employees, based on base pay, overtime and bonuses; retirement and commuting allowances are excluded. Companies may publish on their own website or on the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's public 'Positive Ryouritsu' database.
According to 2022 OECD data, Japan's unadjusted gender wage gap was 22.1%, the fourth-highest among 38 OECD members, driven by low female managerial representation (about 15%) and a high share of women in part-time or fixed-term roles (around 50%). The disclosure law creates transparency and a public paper trail but carries no direct financial penalty for a wide gap; the Ministry can name non-compliant firms, but the first full annual disclosure cycle only closed in mid-2023, so no independent before/after evaluation of its effect on the gap yet exists.

Read the full analysis: https://japansociety.org/news/japan-addresses-the-wage-gap-by-requiring-gender-pay-gap-disclosure/