Editorial: Adopting new system to promote paternity leave

February 24 , 2021

The government will be submitting a bill seeking to revise existing laws on childcare, elderly care and unemployment insurance that aims, as its centerpiece, to promote paternity leave. Its gist: increasing to a total of four occasions for husband and wife to take leave to care for their child for a maximum of four weeks and requiring just two weeks for submission of notice rather than the four needed now.

The bill draws largely on Komeito’s recommendations and mandates employers to promote inhouse awareness and use of paternity leave. Companies with a workforce larger than 1,000 workers are also required to make public the leave’s usage rate.

This is seen as a major step forward in gaining widespread corporate acceptance of paternity leave, which employees remain hesitant in taking due to various concerns, including peer pressure and longstanding social mores.

According to a 2019 UNICEF study, Japan ranked first among 41 countries surveyed as to the duration of the leave and salary guarantee during that time off from work. However, Japan was the worst in usage rate at just 7.48%.

Thirty years have passed since our country legally enabled fathers to take leave to care for their newborns. Still, acceptance has been painfully slow and further delays are no longer excusable.

The government hopes to raise the leave’s usage rate to 30% by 2025, but it must be prepared to aggressively push agencies and enterprises to achieve that goal. Obviously, cooperation from the business community is equally imperative.

In truth, the number of firms establishing workplaces conducive to taking such leave has been on the rise. Local governments are equally engaged, with the Gifu prefectural government, for one, posting an impressive 51.6% usage rate.

Still, the national government has much work to do and the private and public sectors needs to work closely together to facilitate the universal adoption of paternity leave.