The Effect of Gender Equality Policy on the Labor Market in Japan

日本在2000年制定了《两性平等社会基本法》之后，各地方政府都采取了一些与两性平等有关的政策。本研究的主要目的是评估这些性别平等政策对劳动力市场结果的影响，特别是对女性劳动力的变化。我们收集了来自各发达国家和日本各地方政府的大量相关数据，并进行了分析。我们发现性别平等政策与我们的数据中的劳动力市场结果无关。然而，我们发现，在企业层面的工作生活平衡政策，这被认为是在日本的性别平等政策之一，有一个积极的影响，他们的业务。具体而言，实行产假或短时间工作等与工作生活平衡相关的人事制度的企业，其员工人均利润显著高于不重视员工工作生活平衡的企业。

After The Basic Law for a Gender-equal Society was established in 2000 in Japan, each local government has been adopting some policies related to Gender Equality. Our central purpose of this study is to assess the effect of these gender equity policies on the labor market outcomes, especially on the change of female labor force. We accumulated a lot of related data from each developed country and from each local government in Japan, and analyzed. We found the gender-equality policy had no relation to labor market outcomes in our data. However, we found that the work life balance policy at firm level, which is regarded one of the gender-equality policy in Japan, has a positive effect on their business. To put it concretely, the ordinary profit per employees of the firms that had the some personnel system related to work life balance, such as maternity leave or short-time work was significantly higher than that of the firm that did not pay attention to their employees' work life balance.