2020 EPD in Japan, on May 6th

BPW Japan has been working on the EPD campaign since 2012 in cooperation with International Federation of BPW's activities. BPW Japan has held a national conference to learn about the current situation and background of the gender wage gap and discuss its solutions. BPW Japan has held an annual exhibition at the Gender Equality Forum hosted by NWEC(National Women's Education Center) since 2017. In addition, each club has met with the leaders of the local authorities and the related departments, and appeal EPD to local people in order to make understand the main point of the EPD. However, this year, in 2020, it became a different style of activity than usual because of COVID-19 pandemics.

(1) On May 6, the day of the 2020 EPD , BPW members from all over the country gathered online to exchange opinions.
⇒ http://www.bpw-japan.jp/japanese/new.html#epd2020

(2) The Equal Pay Day National Conference, which was six months behind the previous year, was held on October 18 as a hybrid of venue and online participation to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Finally, as the result of the national conference, we adopted the 2020 EPD Appeal.
⇒ http://www.bpw-japan.jp/japanese/dl/2020epd7.pdf

(3) The exhibition at the NWEC Gender Equality Forum was held as usual.
⇒ http://www.bpw-japan.jp/japanese/dl/epd-pannels.pdf

(4) Each club's activities were fairly limited because we were in the midst of an emergency declaration on the day of the EPD. Only a small number of clubs had met and discussed with local leaders and administrative personnel.

(5) BPW-Japan has made a new campaign material, EPD’s sticky note this year.

What is Equal Pay Day ??

Do you know Equal Pay Day campaign which takes place in various countries every year?
“Equal Pay Day” is the day when women earn the same wage as men.
Unfortunately, it is common in the world that the women’s average wage is lower than that of men. To earn the same amount of wage as men, women have to work several months more than men.
Equal Pay Day is the day when women get the same wage as men in a year, working much more days than men.

In 2020, Japan’s Equal Pay Day is May 6th.
It means that when both men and women begin working on Jan. 1st 2019, women can get the same amount of wage on May 6th 2020 which men could get on Dec. 31th 2019.
Even if the gap is little when young, the gap will open up more and more.

A women’s organization called BPW has worked on this campaign all over the world. It is not a separate struggle for higher wages. Our colleagues all over the world are working hard to make people in various positions understand this gender pay gap.

The government is also working to eliminate the wage gap between men and women. The Basic Act for Gender Equality, which has been approved by the Cabinet under the Basic Act for Gender Equality Society, also includes "eliminating the wage gap between men and women." In order to achieve the "End discrimination against all women and girls (5-1)" specified in the United Nations SDGs Target 5, it is necessary to eliminate the income and wage gap between men and women. In Japan, we have been working on Equal Pay Day since 2012, but we revised the calculation method in 2019.