Sexual Harassment in Japan

While there has been much progress in combating sexual harassment since the issue first entered the public consciousness in Japan in the late 1980s, sekuhara remains a serious and widespread problem for both Japanese women and foreign women living in Japan. While the Equal Employment Opportunity Law (EEOL) was passed in 1985, it was not until 1999 that revisions to the law included definitions of sexual harassment and legal penalties for employers. There are, however, no punitive measures to enforce the law aside from making the names of the offending companies public – something which the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women raised concerns about last year. There has been, however, an increase in public awareness of sexual harassment in Japan. According to the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, there were 8,120 women who filed sexual harassment complaints with equal employment opportunity offices in 2008, compared with 7,706 in 2004 and 2,534 in 1997. Much of this increase in awareness came about through increased international attention as well as a higher level of domestic attention to the issue. Yet despite this increase in awareness, relatively little is known about how sexual harassment affects foreign women living in Japan. (October 26, 2010)