Twenty five years have passed since Japan passed the Equal Employment Opportunity Law for Men and Women in order to fight gender inequality at the workplace.

By this time, people might think that a horde of college-educated women are calling the shots as corporate managers. But a survey by the Kyodo News agency shows that is hardly the case.

Of Japan’s 110 major corporations polled, 107 said it is important to use women’s talents, but women who are small section heads account for an average of a mere 5.4% of the total number of those holding that title.

Of the total number of managers heading larger departments, women made up 2.5%. The figure goes down further to 1.7% for women corporate executives. In contrast, around 40% of corporate managers are women in other advanced countries, such as the United Kingdom and Germany.

The Japanese government has set a goal of boosting the percentage of women in managerial or other leadership positions to 30% by 2020, but Japanese companies appear to be less enthusiastic about the idea.

Asked to give the percentages of women they want to see in managerial positions, the corporate respondents said an average of 18.6% for section chiefs, 15.4% for department heads and 14.4% for executives.

Still, out of this year’s new hires holding fast-track positions for managerial posts, an average of 27.7% were women.

Companies do want to employ more women because they are in desperate need of highly skilled workers because the country’s working population is shrinking.

But the poll results suggest that there is still a widespread notion that business management is a man’s job. On the other hand, a significant number of firms want female workers to do more to improve the fortunes of employers.

Asked what they want out of female employees, 27 firms said they want women to reform their companies, and 22 said they hope to see female workers make more use of traits unique to women.

Of the companies that find female employees somewhat wanting, 28 said women should acquire a broader perspective, 13 said women should be more flexible and 12 said they do not want them to quit early.

Commenting on the poll results, Professor Takashi Kashima, a gender studies expert at Jissen Women’s University, argues that there is a misconception among companies that women do not possess a broad perspective and are less flexible compared with their male colleagues.

‘‘If they really want female workers to engineer reform, corporate managers should do more to give women their say,’’ he said.

Following the enforcement of the Equal Employment Opportunity Law in April 1986, further legislative reform and in-house changes at companies have done a lot to put men and women on a more equal footing. Still, women remain quite disadvantaged when it comes to obtaining secure employment.

Photo: Chris Gladis / Flickr