"30% of Japanese Job Seekers Experienced Sexual Harassment"

A survey revealed that 30% of Japanese university students experienced sexual harassment during their job hunting activities.

A recruitment briefing session for new employees is being held in Tokyo, Japan. [Image source=Yonhap News]

According to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei) on the 18th, the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare commissioned an external private organization to conduct a survey in January targeting 1,000 people who graduated from university between 2020 and 2022. The results showed that 30.1% of those who had internship experience during university reported experiencing sexual harassment at least once.

By gender, 32.4% of men reported being victims, which was higher than the 27.5% of women. The most common type of harassment was "sexual jokes or teasing" at 38.2%. This was followed by "invitations to meals or dates" (35.1%), "unnecessary physical contact" (27.2%), and "coercion into sexual relations" (19.7%).

Among other job hunting activities such as company briefings and interviews, 31.9% of respondents reported experiencing sexual harassment. Similarly, the response rate was higher for men (34.3%) than for women (28.8%).

Nikkei speculated that the reason for the higher male victim response rate might be "companies paying more attention to preventing sexual harassment and being more cautious about their behavior toward women."