Photo/Illutration Tomoko Yoshino, chair of Rengo (the Japanese Trade Union Confederation), far right, and other attendees take part in a meeting of the Council for Gender Equality at the prime minister’s office in Tokyo on June 5. (Koichi Ueda)

In a new policy draft, the government set a target of having at least 30 percent of executive positions at companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime Market be filled by women by 2030. 

The draft, called the Priority Policies for Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality, dubbed the “honebuto no hoshin” (big-boned policies) for women, was presented at a Council for Gender Equality meeting on June 5. 

It is this year’s version of the government’s policy to empower women and promote gender equality and will soon be finalized.

The aim is to encourage promoting women to managerial positions--an issue Japan is lagging compared to the United States and European countries--and create an environment where they can actively participate in society.

Last year, women accounted for 11.4 percent of executive positions at companies on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime Market, which are mainly large companies.

There were 1,835 companies listed on the Prime Market as of May 31.

Around 20 percent of these companies had no women in executive positions at all. Women made up 30 percent or more of executive positions at only 2.2 percent of them.

In 2022, women held 45.2 percent of executive positions at companies in France, according to the Cabinet Office.

The figures were 40.9 percent in Britain, 37.2 percent in Germany and 31.3 percent in the United States.

The draft policies the government presented on June 5 said Japan is “far behind” other countries on the issue of having women in leadership positions.

Thus, the draft asks the Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime Market to revise its rules imposed on the companies listed on the market by the end of this year.

The changes the draft seeks in the rules include having at least one woman in an executive position by around 2025, having women in at least 30 percent of executive positions by 2030 and preparing action plans to achieve such targets.

By setting numerical targets for companies on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime Market, the government intends to encourage other companies to have women in executive positions, too.

Apart from the request to change the rules of the Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime Market, the government will by the end of this year set its own percentage target for women in managerial posts that companies on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime Market should achieve by 2025.

Such policies will be included in the annual Basic Policy on Economic and Fiscal Management and Reform, which the Cabinet is set to approve by the end of this month.

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