Japan is set to lift its last blanket ban on female employment and let women work in mines and tunnels, defying not only traditional male attitudes about protecting women but also superstition.
Women are barred from working in mines and pits or constructing tunnels under the Labour Standard Law of 1947, which was enacted with a stated goal of women’s safety at a time when coal mining was a major industry in Japan.
Even before that, Japanese superstitution has held that a goddess living in the mountains would be jealous and angry to see a woman toiling in a pit, causing a cave-in accident.
But times have changed.
A meeting of tunnel construction, health and legal experts concluded there was ”little reason for the labour ban currently in place” thanks to technology to reduce dust and to automation, a labour ministry official said on Wednesday.
If there is no opposition at a higher council of the ministry, the deregulation will take place in April 2007 at the earliest, she said.
Calls for lifting the ban have increased with the growing number of female civil engineering experts who are still barred from underground sites.
After Japan passed a ground-breaking law on equal employment opportunities in 1986, women journalists, doctors and nurses have been allowed to work underground temporarily, but the ban on other female workers remained.
The experts’ panel at the labour ministry launched the debate on modifying the law last December. A study by the World Economic Forum released in May found that Japan was far below other developed nations in gender equality.
It ranked Japan 38th out of 58 countries in reducing inequality, below China which was 33rd. The study said that while Japan ranked number three in women’s health, it had serious inequalities in the political and economic spheres. – Sapa-AFP