Nintendo is little known for its quarterly financial reports, as well as the investor and shareholder Q&As the company holds when those reports are released. Both come from the company’s main base of operations located in Japan. It was the main source of information about how well the Nintendo Switch was selling.
However, they also publish an annual report for the previous fiscal year as a whole. In those annual reports, Nintendo also publishes its own findings about things like the company’s workforce. Sometimes the data they release is good, but unfortunately, this is not one of them.
Nintendo reports that only 4.2% of their managers in Japan are women. Not only that, but the company says that the women who work there earn, on average, only 72% of what men are paid. According to Nintendo, the former statistic is unchanged from when they first published it in 2021. The latter, on the other hand, is the first time the company has released this information in an annual report.
So why is there such a wage gap? Nintendo blames lease issues. A large proportion of their veteran employees are men, and the average Nintendo employee will stay with the company for 14.3 years. In other words, Nintendo thinks it’s because of “differences in seniority and average age.” However, the company later says that “there is no difference in the treatment of men and women in terms of pay or appraisal systems”.
Those stats are specifically for Japan, but Nintendo also provided a little insight into how things look worldwide. Nintendo does not release salary information, including at its subsidiaries Nintendo of America and Nintendo of Europe, but they state in their annual report that 23.5% of the company’s managers worldwide are women.
