Japanese experts have suggested that the government investigate concerns that gender pay gaps could be driving the outflow of young women from rural areas in the country.
Members of a project team to promote the active involvement of women in working life, chaired by Wakako Yata, Special Adviser to the Prime Minister, suggested at a meeting on Monday that the government should suspend data collection on the gender pay gap in rural areas improve. small businesses to gain a better understanding of the situation.
The government will consider concrete measures regarding such data collection, which will be reflected in its annual economic and budgetary guidelines to be issued next month.
It has been pointed out that larger wage gaps between men and women in rural areas, compared to those in big cities, could stimulate outflows.
Miwa Koyasu, head of research and consultancy firm Will Lab, said at the meeting that “the understanding and commitment of local leaders” are crucial to redress gender pay gaps in rural areas and small businesses.
Koyasu said data on wage gaps “needs to be collected with great clarity so that locals can get serious” in tackling the problem, for example by releasing an inequality index for regional comparisons.
According to the Cabinet Secretariat, gender pay gaps are small in the Tokyo metropolitan area, where women’s wages are relatively high. Meanwhile, wage gaps tend to be wider in regions where the share of unmarried men is high due to the outflow of women.
Experts also said at the meeting that local governments should make correcting the wage gap part of regional revitalization efforts to stem the exodus of women.
