For the first time, a Japanese court has found a Japanese employer guilty of sex discrimination for denying women promotions. The Tokyo District Court ordered the Shiba Shinyo credit union to pay 12 women employees almost $900,000 and to promote eleven of them to management positions. One of the women has already retired.
The twelve women filed their lawsuit more than nine years ago. They said men were trained on the job to pass the management exam, but women had to prepare on their own outside of work. One woman who worked at the bank for 42 years while putting herself through college, said that some of the men who started with her are now on the bank’s board of directors while she was still answering phones when she retired three years ago. Ninety-nine percent of the bank’s managers are men.
The bank has appealed the ruling.
