The Equal Employment Opportunity Law and labor force behavior of women in Japan

Abstract

This study uses repeated cross-sectional data to investigate the impact of the Equal Employment Opportunity Law (EEOL) for men and women enacted in 1986 on labor force behavior of women. I find that regular employment among women, examined separately by education and marital status, did not increase after the enactment of the EEOL. Cohorts of women who graduated from university after the EEOL married later or were less likely to marry than previous cohorts.

Equal Employment Opportunity Law and the gender wage gap in Japan: A cohort analysis

“…For junior high school graduates of post-EEOL cohorts, the coefficients are positive, which means that the employment gap rose for this education group. These patterns are consistent with the findings that the EEOL advanced the regular employment of post-EEOL cohorts of university graduate women at young ages but did not increase regular employment for less-educated women or for university graduate women of pre-EEOL cohorts (Abe 2009a). 14 Taken together, relative wage gains are most obvious for the pre-EEOL cohorts of the less-educated group and smallest for the post-EEOL cohorts of university graduates.…”

“…14 Abe (2009a) also shows that the proportion of university graduate women who work as regular employees at older ages remained almost the same for the pre-EEOL cohorts and the post-EEOL cohorts. For instance, for university graduates aged 40-44, the RER was 38.4 percent for the earliest post-EEOL cohort (born 1963-1967), while the same ratios were 36-38 percent for the three pre-EEOL cohorts (born 1948-1962).…”

“…In this article, I perform a cohort-based analysis of the female-to-male wage gap. Analysis by cohorts is particularly important because the EEOL is assumed to have expanded employment opportunities for younger cohorts of women who finished schooling and entered the labor market after the EEOL's enactment in 1986 (Edwards 1988(Edwards , 1994Cannings and Lazonick 1994;Blau et al 2006;Abe 2009a). I call those cohorts who finished schooling after 1986 "post-EEOL cohorts" and those cohorts who finished schooling before the EEOL enactment "pre-EEOL cohorts."…”

A cohort analysis of male labor supply in Japan

“…In this assessment, differences in responsiveness to the business cycle across education and marital status are 6 By contrast, the ESS is not suitable for studying labor force participation or unemployment since most of the questions are concerned with the usual status of employment instead of activities in the reference week. 7 Abe (2011) also reports that women's employment differs significantly across marital status in Japan for a time period similar to the one analyzed in this paper. considered.…”

“…Genda et al (2010) conduct a cohort-based analysis of young men, although their main focus is the relationship between the cohort effects and the unemployment rate at the time of labor market entry by each cohort. Cohort-based analyses of women's participation behavior in Japan include Abe (2001), Fukuda (2006), and Abe (2011). individual's work is regular full-time employment or non-regular employment over an extended period of time. 6 Issues concerning non-regular employment have attracted attention in other East Asian countries as well.…”