A year after revisions to Japan’s paternity leave system, the number of new fathers taking childcare leave has jumped, with one survey showing that the number of days taken off had doubled from last year.
Despite Japan having one of the world’s most generous paternity leave systems already before the revisions, the number of fathers actually making use of it had remained relatively low.
However, the number of days that the average father took for paternity leave this year has risen to 23.4, up from just 2.4 in 2019, a survey conducted by home builder Sekisui House found.
The percentage of those who have taken paternity leave has also risen to 24.4 percent, up from 9.6 percent four years ago.
The survey polled 9,400 people with children of elementary school age or younger.
A government push to encourage fathers to take childcare leave has been at least partially responsible for the jump. With revisions to the childcare law last year, fathers can be more flexible about taking leave in batches in the eight weeks after their child’s birth, making the leave they were already entitled to more accessible.
From April, companies with at least 1,000 employees have also been required to disclose what percentage of their employees take paternity leave. That has added to societal pressure on companies to let fathers take time off to care for their children.
Japan’s paternity leave system, which allows up to 52 weeks of paid time off, was the second most generous among countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as of last year. In comparison, the US does not have any national statutory paid paternity leave, while the average among OECD nations is 10.4 days.
Still, few men had been actually using the system due to a mixture of societal and corporate pressure.
“Employees have started to feel the change in society and corporate attitudes and have begun to feel that it’s OK to take paternity leave,” said Akiko Matsumoto, an assistant manager at Hitachi’s diversity and inclusion division.
Last year, Hitachi began offering seminars to expecting employees that outline available childcare and other related systems, and introduced tools that can calculate workers’ likely net incomes during parental leave.
Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp recently said it would double the amount of company-backed leave available to male employees to 20 days, until their child turns two.
Some firms are taking a further step in their approach. From August, Sekisui House launched a new system that allows parents to take leave when their children are unable to go to school, or have a serious illness. Workers can either shorten their working hours or days, or take full leave of up to two years.
Partly through government efforts to support women, Japan’s labor participation rate rose to 74.3 percent last year among working-age women. That is 16 percentage points higher than when the childcare leave law was enacted in 1992.
Yet while more women work, they still shoulder the bulk of housework and childcare in the country.
The amount of time Japanese women spend doing housework and childcare is more than five-fold the time spent by men, OECD showed.
That is far above the 1.9 times average.
Among couples with one child where the husband does not help with housework and childcare at all on his days off, only one-third have a second child, according to a health ministry report published last year.
That ratio goes up to more than 80 percent when husbands spend more than six hours on housework and childcare.
Those figures suggest that resolving Japan’s lack of gender balance in work and care provision might hold the key to solving the country’s population crisis.
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