Japan ranked 125th in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index in 2023. South Korea sat at 105th and China at 107th. The index covers 146 countries, and for a member of the OECD with one of the richest economies anywhere, the placement stings.
It was not a one-off. Japan came in 121st in 2019. The gap is a long-running one.
Gains that stop short of the top
There is real change to point to. Female participation in Japan’s workforce has climbed to 73% over the past twenty years, ahead of the United States and the OECD average, and more women now keep working or return after having children. Women make up half of this year’s new prosecutor hires, up from 8% a couple of decades ago. Tokyo has had a woman governor, Yuriko Koike, since 2016.
But look at what kind of work. A large share of the growth in women’s employment is part-time or lower-tier jobs. About 40% of employed women work part time, against 15% of men. Women who do the same job as men often hold less prestige and take home less pay, and Japan sits near the bottom of the OECD for gender wage equality.
At the top the numbers get thin. Women are 8% of CEOs in Japan, a rise of just one point in ten years.
Targets that keep moving
In 2003 the government set a goal of 30% of senior management roles going to women by 2020. It has been pushed back twice, and the new deadline is 2030. Even that looks hard to hit.
Politics tells a similar story. When Prime Minister Fumio Kishida reshuffled his Cabinet, the number of women rose from 2 to 5 in a 24-member team. Media then pointed out that none of the 54 non-Cabinet political appointees, such as deputy ministers and parliamentary secretaries, were women. That had not happened since those posts began in 2001. Japan was also the only country without a woman representing it at a G7 ministerial meeting of gender ministers it hosted in June. Only about 11% of parliamentarians were women as of 2022, and 12% of politicians in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party are women.
The party says it cannot find enough qualified women. Naoko Sugiyama, a professor of American literature at Japan Women’s University, and Deborah Hayden, a partner at FGS Global Japan, argue organisations should be recruiting and keeping female talent themselves. Hayden says the government has made great strides through legislation, including more childcare facilities, but “the problem now is actually with the companies to encourage women to shine.”
What families feel
Home life carries the same pressure. Sugiyama says couples may choose either surname after marriage, yet the social pressure to take the man’s name is enormous. A man who takes his wife’s name is often ridiculed as “henpecked,” she says. In 2021, 95% of newlywed couples chose the husband’s surname, and the Diet has refused to let spouses keep separate names.
Money plays a part too. Japan offers some of the most generous parental leave in the world, plus limits on overtime and equal pay for equal work. Yet the average yearly wage is JPY6,180,000 (about NZ$67,680), compared with $97,600 in New Zealand, and many couples feel they need two incomes. Fewer believe they can afford to raise children. Japan’s fertility rate keeps falling.
Economists see the gap as a lost opportunity. Goldman Sachs projected in 2019 that closing the gender employment gap could lift Japan’s GDP by 10%. The Tokyo Stock Exchange is pressing listed companies to meet diversity criteria for women in upper management, and those that do not risk being removed from the listing.
