Barely two months have passed since the govern ment enacted the Gender Equality Law. While defenders of the new law insist that is hardly enough time for its effectiveness to be tested, many women's groups, and their male supporters, disagree. The reason, they say, should be obvious: Like the Equal Employment Opportunity Law of 1986, the new legislation is woefully lacking in specific compliance-enforcement measures.

The Gender Equality Law is an overdue, if tentative, step in the right direction. It is true it has been in force so briefly that many people are not even aware of its existence. But any hope that, given more time, it will prove its worth may be misplaced until more concrete provisions are added to it, including coverage for non-Japanese women living in this country and guidelines for the setting up of government entities to tackle gender discrimination issues head-on. It was not until this year that the Equal Employment Opportunity Law was revised to include steps such as publicizing the names of companies that violate its provisions and disclosing the nature of their offenses.

Earlier this month, Mazda Motor Corp. announced plans to promote some 500 of its women workers, but this step is as rare as it is welcome and may reflect the influence of the company's U.S. partner more than any profound change of heart in Japanese executive suites. Most large companies here separate their job slots into two categories, "fast-track" career opportunities for those with anticipated managerial abilities and noncareer openings for all the rest. The majority of working Japanese women are hired for the second category. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government found two years ago that while women made up 39.9 percent of the workforce in the capital region, they accounted for only 14.1 percent of managerial posts.