Female workers account for only 2.2 percent of those being groomed for senior management at Japanese companies, according to results of a government survey released Friday.
The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry survey, conducted between November and March, covers 215 companies with career-track systems nationwide.
It shows there are only 3,042 women among 139,322 workers being trained on various work fronts to become future leaders at their companies.
Among the surveyed companies, 72.6 percent said the proportion of women career-track workers is less than 10 percent, while 13.1 percent said they have no women on their career track, the ministry said.
Among companies that hired men and women for career positions in 1991, 48 percent said there is little difference in the pace of promotion between those men and women as of last October.
But 42.7 percent said men have moved to higher positions than their female counterparts during the same period, while only 1.3 percent of the firms said women have been promoted to higher positions than men.
The ministry said the practices of 14 companies -- 6.5 percent of those surveyed -- infringe the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, which was enforced in 1986 to prevent discrimination against women in the workplace.
The violations include setting different career courses for women and hiring only men for career-track positions, the ministry said.
The equal employment law sets no penalty for violation.