TOKYO (Reuters) -- Japan's Cabinet approved on Tuesday the first revisions in almost a decade to an equal employment opportunity law in an effort to curb discrimination against women in the workplace, a government official said.

The legislation, which the government hopes to enact in the current session of Parliament, would make it easier to take maternity leave, ban employers from treating women unfavorably because they are pregnant or have small children and strengthen measures against sexual harassment, Kyodo news agency said.

The revised law would take effect in April 2007 and would be the first change in Japan's two decade-old Equal Employment Opportunities Law since 1997.

Critics, however, have charged that the proposed revisions are still too timid.

Twenty years after Japan's equal employment opportunity law took effect, the country's women still lag those in many industrialized countries in terms of economic and political clout.

Female employees are paid on average only two-thirds of a man's salary, and only a small minority are in management.

Boosting women's participation in the workplace, however, will be vital to cope with Japan's rapidly ageing population and the resulting decline in the ratio of workers to retirees.

Japanese women have tended to resign from their jobs on giving birth, and return to work often on a part-time basis when their children enter school. Only about 55 percent of all Japanese women work, compared with 62 percent in the United States.