10 minute read | July.01.2026
日本語: Japan Employment Law Alert: 男女間賃金差異等の公表義務対象の拡大（常時雇用従業員数101人以上の企業に影響）
The Act on the Promotion of Women’s Active Engagement in Professional Life (the “Act”) requires companies with 101 or more regularly employed workers1 (“Workers”) to disclose at least one item selected from 14 prescribed items relating to the promotion of women’s participation (such as the ratio of female workers to all workers, and the gender gap in average years of continuous service). Effective April 2026, an amendment to the Act (the “Amendment”) added the following required disclosure items:2
In Japan, the gender pay gap remains large by international standards, with one contributing factor being the low ratio of women in managerial positions. The Amendment aims to address this situation by extending the term of the Act (originally a sunset law set to expire on March 31, 2025) by ten years and by expanding the scope of the disclosure obligation as described above. In light of the background motivating the Amendment, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (“MHLW”) is expected to place more emphasis on ensuring compliance with the disclosure obligations going forward.
In light of the Amendment, in this publication, we provide an overview of the obligation to disclose information on gender pay gap and other items under the amended Act (the “Disclosure Obligations”), including a summary of the Disclosure Obligations (Section 1 below) and the current status of compliance (Section 2 below).
Below is a summary of the Disclosure Obligations regarding: (i) the disclosure items; (ii) the timing and frequency; (iii) the medium; and (iv) the penalties and other consequences of noncompliance.3
Companies with 101 or more Workers are required to disclose all of the following items ① through ③ for each fiscal year.
① Gender pay gap: The ratio (%) of the average annual compensation4 of female workers to that of male workers, calculated separately for (i) all workers, (ii) regular workers (seiki shain), and (iii) non-regular workers (hi-seiki shain) (part-time workers, fixed-term contract workers, etc.).
② Ratio of women in managerial positions: The ratio (%) of women among managers (positions at the section chief (kacho) level5 or above, excluding officers/directors).
③ With respect to the items set forth in “Table 1 (Provision of Opportunities for Professional Life for Female Workers)” and “Table 2 (Development of a Work Environment Contributing to the Balance of Professional and Family Life)” below, companies with 101 to 300 Workers must select at least one item from either Table 1 or Table 2 (one item in total), and companies with 301 or more Workers must select at least one item from each of Table 1 and Table 2 (two items in total).
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[Table 1 (Provision of Opportunities for Professional Life for Female Workers)] |
[Table 2 (Development of a Work Environment Contributing to the Balance of Professional and Family Life)] |
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Of the disclosure items set forth in Section (1) above, items ① and ② pertaining to a given fiscal year must be disclosed within approximately three months after the start of the following fiscal year.
With respect to the first time of a new disclosure required after the Amendment coming into effect (for example, the disclosure of the gender pay gap by companies with 101 to 300 Workers), such disclosure must be made for the first fiscal year ending on or after April 1, 2026, in accordance with the above rules. Specifically:
On the other hand, item ③ set forth in Section (1) above must be updated approximately once a year or more, with figures that are, as a general rule, no older than the fiscal year two years prior to the date of disclosure.
Disclosure may be made through the “Database on Promotion of Women’s Participation and Advancement in the Workplace” (Japanese only) operated by the MHLW (the “MHLW Database”) or a company’s own website or other media. However, if such company’s own website or other media is deemed to not be a method that sufficiently allows female job seekers and others to easily access the information, then it will not be treated as a valid disclosure. As a result, in practice, virtually all disclosures are made through the MHLW Database.
Note that publicly listed companies may in their practice include the gender pay gap and the ratio of women in managerial positions in their annual securities reports (yuka shoken hokokusho); however, such reporting alone does not satisfy the Disclosure Obligations under the Act.
In the event of a violation of the Disclosure Obligations, MHLW (the Director of the Prefectural Labour Bureau) may issue an advisory (jogen), guidance (shidou), or recommendation (kankoku) to correct the violation. If the company fails to comply with such recommendation, MHLW (the Director of the Prefectural Labour Bureau) may publicly disclose the company’s name. To date, there have been no instances of a company’s name being publicly disclosed.
However, in light of the motivating background to the Amendment, MHLW is expected to place an emphasis on ensuring compliance with the Disclosure Obligations going forward, and so it is anticipated that MHLW will more actively pursue compliance, particularly with respect to companies with 101 to 300 Workers.
Recent status of compliance with the Disclosure Obligations is as shown in the table below.
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Number of Workers |
101 to 300 |
301 or more |
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Total number of companies (as of September 30, 2025; published by MHLW6) |
33,579 companies |
18,163 companies |
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Number of companies that have disclosed the items required before the Amendment on the MHLW Database (as of May 29, 2026) |
16,237 companies |
(Reference value7) 15,054 companies |
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Number of companies that have already disclosed the items required after the Amendment on the MHLW Database (figures for certain of the required disclosures8 as reference value; as of May 29, 2026) |
4,742 companies |
11,319 companies |
The “number of companies that have disclosed” in the table above refers to the number of companies that have made some form of disclosure on the relevant items as of the applicable date and includes some companies whose disclosures are incomplete or whose data has not been updated. Nevertheless, it can be said that a significant number of companies are complying with the Disclosure Obligations. Before the Amendment, there was a gap in compliance between companies with 301 or more Workers and companies with 101 to 300 Workers; going forward, however, compliance among companies with 101 to 300 Workers is expected to improve significantly.
In addition, even before the Amendment, the Act has required companies with 101 or more Workers not only to comply with the Disclosure Obligations but also to formulate an action plan regarding the promotion of women’s active engagement in professional life (referred to as a “General Employer Action Plan” (ippan jigyonushi kodo keikaku)), disseminate it internally, publish it, and file it with the Prefectural Labour Bureau. As of September 30, 2025, 96.7%9 of companies with 101 or more Workers had filed their General Employer Action Plans.
1 Regularly employed workers” means workers who are employed on a de facto indefinite basis regardless of the form of their employment contract, and includes the following:
① Workers employed for an indefinite term; and
② Workers who have been continuously employed for one year or more, or who are expected to be continuously employed for one year or more from the time of hire.
2 For companies with 100 or fewer Workers, disclosure of all items is a best-efforts obligation (doryoku gimu) only.
3 For further details, please refer to the MHLW’s special page on the Act (Japanese only).
4 “Compensation” refers to all payments made by the employer to workers as consideration for labor, regardless of the nomenclature used (such as wages, salary, allowances, or bonuses). However, severance pay, commuting allowances, and similar payments may be excluded from “compensation” at the discretion of the employer.
5 “Section chief (kacho) level” refers to persons falling under either of the following categories:
① a person who is commonly referred to as “section chief” (kacho) at a business and who heads an organizational unit comprising two or more subsections or having 10 or more team members (including the section chief); or
② a person at the same business who, regardless of title or number of team members, holds a position with duties and level of responsibility equivalent to that of a section chief (provided that such person is not at the lowest tier of the organizational hierarchy).
6 https://www.mhlw.go.jp/content/11909000/koudou_R70930.pdf (Japanese only)
7 The number of companies that have disclosed the gender pay gap (item ① in Section 1(1) above) on the MHLW Database.
8 The number of companies that have disclosed the gender pay gap and the ratio of women in managerial positions (items ① and ② in Section 1(1) above) on the MHLW Database.
9 This figure refers to the number of companies that have filed some form of action plan as of the applicable date and includes some companies that have filed plans that are not necessarily appropriately compliant, such as plans that have not been updated even though their implementation period has elapsed.