Feature: Japanese women's workplace status in Dark Age

"It was supposed to be one of the happiest times of my life, a period I wanted to cherish, but when I told my colleagues and seniors at work I was pregnant my life became a living nightmare. I was regularly on the receiving end of inappropriate comments about my sex life, forced to be around smokers and was given a working week that was longer and physically harder."

So recalls Manami Yoshida, 38, a former employee of a notable consumer finance company headquartered in Shinagawa, a modern business hub in Tokyo, adding that since she was forced to quit job, she has found out that such cases of maternity harassment ( known colloquially as "matahara" in Japanese) continue to be the rule and not the exception for many pregnant women working in Japan.

In fact, according to the latest statistics and despite pledges from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to address such a deeply entrenched malignant chauvinism at workplace, with the ruling party leader going as far as to launch Womenomics initiative of ensuring more women joined the workforce and stayed in it after motherhood, aided by more daycare facilities for babies and toddlers, and calls to smash Japan's well-known glass ceiling, which has historically prevented women from climbing the ranks to management and executive positions in companies, the problem, like cancer, is spreading.

According to a survey released on July 8 by insurance consulting and brokerage services firm IRRC Corp. here, one in six women had experienced maternity harassment while working, with 16 percent saying they had suffered harassment from their colleagues or bosses directly related to the fact that they were pregnant. Some of the most derogatory remarks made to the pregnant women, according to the recent study, were that the women should simply be fired for being pregnant.

Yoshida said to avoid the latter scenario, which is an actuality in many cases and not a benign threat of some kind, specifically switched jobs in her mid-thirties, from a more traditional company involved in providing third party technical support to vendors and customers of a renowned PC maker here, because she had decided along with her husband that she wanted to start a family, but knew that working for a company with such an old-fashioned, patriarchal corporate culture would mean she would be expected to quit early on in her pregnancy and could easily be coerced into doing so.

"I'd heard of the expression "matahara" in the news, but I never expected I would become a victim of it and by changing companies I thought I had guaranteed myself the opportunity to have both a family and a career, as my former company, ostensibly, is modern and known the world over," Yoshida told Xinhua in an interview, just a stone's throw away from her former office.

"Within my social sphere my female friends had mostly quit their jobs when they became pregnant and the majority of them were content to be housewives, as their husbands' income was sufficient enough for them to not be earning, but for me it was different, we needed a double income as I suppose many families do, especially when factoring in future education costs, possibly times two if we decided to have a second child," she said.

But for Yoshida, a graduate from the prestigious Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo, with an upper intermediate command of English, quitting was not an option, both for financial reasons and because she'd felt both studied and worked hard enough since graduating to deserve to keep her career and not give up her dream of becoming a mother, hence the switch to a company she thought would support her.

However, her pregnancy brought with it a deluge of derogatory comments, snide as well as outright churlish behavior towards her, and led to an overall negatively-charged, harassment-fueled atmosphere in her workplace that eventually forced her to quit, for the sake of both her physical and mental health.

"The day I told my boss I was three-months pregnant he laughed at me, frowned and then asked inexplicably when was the last time my husband and I had had sex, this line of questioning alone was nothing short of a combination of both sexual and maternal harassment. He then went on a rant about what a nuisance pregnant women were in the workplace as well as at home, because at night they were, 'good for nothing' and just lay in bed 'looking like grotesque beached whales,'" recounted Yoshida.

Sayuri Arakawa, 29, concurred during the same interview with Xinhua that her experiences of maternal harassment were remarkably similar to those of Yoshida. With six-month-old baby in tow, the former cosmetics retailer said her human resources department told her in no uncertain terms that it would be "unsightly" for a pregnant woman to be promoting beauty products to the public and could result in a plunge in sales.

"I honestly thought things were changing in Japan. I believed the government when they said that things are going to be better for working women and working mothers in Japan, but like so many others, as soon as I announced I was pregnant, the bullying began and while it was subtle, it was relentless and finally I had to quit, I was given no choice," Arakawa recalled.

"I asked my boss if I could work slightly less hours the more pregnant I became, or more accurately, I didn't want to do any overtime as I was exhausted and was worried about the health of my baby. My boss said he'd taken it up with his seniors and the request was flatly rejected. Not only that, a week or so later my hours were extended and I was asked to do a double-shift every other weekend, it was more than I could handle," Arakawa blurted, half angry, half utterly upset, to the point she needed consoling from Yoshida, a kindred spirit, and had to pause the interview.

When Arakawa regained her composure, she talked with great pride of the time she was accepted to work at the company and that although she had only graduated from junior college, was on the lower management rung by her mid-twenties.

It was, however, only after she was forced to quit, that a company insider informed her that her promotion was just a false incentive to work more hours for a nominal pay rise and that despite being a proficient accountant, sales and PR representative, astute presenter and well-regarded by her suppliers, peers and customers alike, was, in fact, only hired for her looks and not expected to work past 30-years-old.

"Long story short, I was given the choice to either quit, or be transferred to work in a back office job that would have meant a pay downgrade and would add a further 40-minute to my morning commute. It was made abundantly clear as well that once I'd left the company, I would not be welcome to return once I'd had my baby and would likely be demoted, but expected to keep the same hours. They wore me down. I was exhausted. I signed the paperwork and they told me I could "go home early" -- meaning my time there was done."

"I've never been made to feel less of a human. I've never cried as much in my life. I gave everything to that company and asked for little in return -- just slightly less hours and to not do so much heavy lifting, but they had me stocking shelves well into my second trimester and I still had to go to company parties with customers where I had to drink alcohol and sit in smoky rooms, sometimes well past the last train home," Arakawa said, adding that in her opinion it was written in stone in Japan that women can work until 30 years-old and then should become mothers, but should dare not attempt to do both.

Arakawa's harrowing experience reflects an archaic and perpetual male hegemony in the work place in Japan and the statistics show that Abe's latest "Womenomics" push was likely nothing more than a bid to appease recent claims about gender equality here by the U.S. government who at the end of June released a study criticizing Japan over its huge gender equality gap and the harassment of pregnant women and mothers in the workplace.

To this end, on June 26 the government opted to fast track a law revision to prevent harassment against pregnant women in workplaces and offer incentives to companies who support their staff members who are struggling to balance both family life and careers.

But those who have been on the receiving end of maternity harassment like Yoshida and Arakawa, now have little faith in what they believe are hollow promises from a government adept at saying the right things, but doing completely the opposite.

And the statistics continue to paint a damning picture of the situation of women in the workplace here, with IRRC Corp. stating that 43 percent of those they surveyed said they were given "no consideration such as exemption from hard work," whilst pregnant, with "more than 50 percent saying they had to continue to work more than eight hours a day."

Punctuating Yoshida and Arakawa's own traumatic experiences, the also survey showed that 41 percent of those harassed at work said they were threatened with "dismissal or termination of employment," with a further 30 percent saying they were spoken to "inconsiderately" and 13 percent saying they were forced to do " hard work or work while standing," with some also being demoted or transferred.

Complaints about harassment and discrimination related to pregnancy and childbirth are on the rise in Japan, with state figures showing that in the year to March, the government received 2,085 complaints from female workers, a leap of 18 percent from six years ago and while Japan's laws guarantee women the right to seek less physically demanding roles during pregnancy and guarantees 14 weeks of maternity leave, Japan's patriarchal prepotence sees that these laws are routinely flouted.

For all of Abe's positive rhetoric on the subject and Japan's seemingly modern economy, with its myriad international ties, the treatment of women in the workplace remains in the Dark Age, to the point that in the World Economic Forum's latest Global Gender Gap Report, Japan ranked 104 out of 142 countries, with the Czech Republic, Uganda and Bangladesh ranking significantly higher on the globally-recognized index. Endi