Pregnant Women Japan’s Technical Intern Program Abuses

14-04-2022 

Malina Wiethaus

Japan and Human Rights Researcher 

Global Human Rights Defense 

Japan’s controversial Technical Intern Program repeatedly makes headlines due to reported power harassment and abuse within the program (Niemand, 2020). New statistics have surfaced in April 2022, elaborating on multiple cases in which pregnant women face abuse within the Technical Intern Program. Vanessa, a intern in the program, reported that her supervisors pressured her into getting an abortion. After failing to achieve this, the supervisors urged her to quit. The 25-year old Filipina experienced this abuse, even though she explicitly told her supervisors that pregnancy determination is a crime and a taboo in her deeply Catholic homeland. Unfortunately, this is a common case within the Technical Intern Program (APF, 2022). 

Japan’s Health Ministry found that 637 interns quit the Technical Intern Program due to pregnancy or childbirth in the timeplan between 2017 and 2020. Statistics however only capture a fracture of the problem. Advocates suspect the real number of women who terminated their pregnancies due to pressure to be much higher. In Japan, “maternaty harassment” is illegal, even though many women still face this harassment on a daily basis. Foreigners are often even more vulnerable to this kind of harassment (APF, 2022). 

The Technical Intern Program has received serious criticism from the international community before. The program, which aims at minimizing the labor gap in Japan’s economy, is known to disrespect the mostly foreign interns. Employers often consider the interns as “interchangeable cheap labor”, leading them to treat them as such (APF, 2022). 

Sources and further readings: 

APF. (2022, April 13). Pregnant workers in Japan’s controversial intern program face abuse. 

Japan Today. Retrieved April 14, 2022, from 

https://japantoday.com/category/national/pregnancy-trap-for-workers-in-controversial

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Niemand, N. (2020, November 27). The reality of Technical Intern Training Program in 

Japan. Japanalyze.Com. Retrieved April 14, 2022, from 

https://japanalyze.com/the-reality-of-technical-intern-training-program-in-japan/