Mandatory programme comes in response to several cases, including one involving a senior bureaucrat

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Senior officials in Japan will be required to attend sexual harassment awareness sessions or risk damaging their career prospects under a proposal being considered by the government.

Japanese media said on Thursday the cabinet was preparing to approve the training programme as early as next week, in response to several high-profile sexual harassment cases, including one involving a senior bureaucrat at the finance ministry.

Junichi Fukuda resigned as vice finance minister in April after he was accused of making sexually inappropriate remarks to a female TV reporter.

Japan sexual harassment survey reveals 150 allegations by women in media Read more

He has denied claims published in a weekly magazine that he asked the woman if he could touch her breasts and suggested that they have an affair.

The finance minister, Taro Aso, drew criticism for suggesting that Fukuda might have been entrapped and saying that sexual harassment was “not a crime”.

The training programme could be approved as early as next week at a cabinet meeting on female empowerment headed by the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, the Mainichi Shimbun said.

Under the proposal, the cabinet office will monitor attendance at the training sessions and make it clear that participation is a precondition for promotion. Victims of sexual harassment will also be able to file complaints against government officials via independent counselors, the newspaper added.

Abe has made increasing the number of women in the workplace a key part of his economic growth strategy, but Japan ranked bottom among G7 countries in the World Economic Forum’s latest global gender gap report.

Abe has come under pressure from Seiko Noda, the minister responsible for women’s empowerment, to introduce legislation making sexual harassment a punishable offence, but Kyodo news quoted sources as saying that the government had yet to decide on her proposal.

A recent survey revealed that dozens of women working for Japanese newspapers and TV networks have been sexually harassed, with government officials, police officers and MPs cited as the perpetrators in about a third of the cases.

The foreign ministry said this week it had suspended Tadaatsu Mori, the director of its Russian division, for nine months following allegations that he sexually harassed a woman.

On Monday, Kunihiko Takahashi, the mayor of a city near Tokyo, resigned following harassment allegations by several female employees.