Equality of Opportunity or Employment Quotas?--A Comparison of Japanese and American Employment Policies for the Disabled

Approaches to the employment of people with disabilities generally fall into two types: the ‘equality of opportunity approach’, based on anti-discrimination laws, and the ‘employment quota approach’, which is based on employment quota systems. The US has adopted an equality of opportunity standard for the employment of people with disabilities, and the defining characteristics of its approach lie in its mandate to provide reasonable accommodations by employers for people with disabilities. In contrast, Japan has adopted an employment quota system. This system is premised on a distinction between people with disabilities and people without disabilities, and mandates the employment of people with disabilities according to established numerical standards. Japan and the US thus have adopted extreme ends of the spectrum of employment protections for the disabled. While the equality of opportunity approach practiced in the US guarantees remedies against discrimination and allows for flexible responses to specific circumstances, it creates problems for employers attempting to predict what constitutes discrimination. The Japanese system, which has adopted an employment quota approach, is able to secure positive effects within certain parameters, but is characterized by an inadequate perspective on the equal treatment of people with disabilities and on prohibitions against their discrimination, and lacks a sense of association between disabilities and job performance.