Japan’s progress toward gender equality has been disturbingly slow, especially in the areas of politics and business, during the quarter century since the basic law for a gender equal society was established. This is despite a wide range of initiatives put in place to achieve the goal. Japanese society needs to step up its efforts to narrow the gender gap.

Japan fell to a record low 125th among 146 countries in global gender equality rankings this year, according to the annual Gender Gap Report of the World Economic Forum (WEF).

The report analyzes progress in gender equality in four areas--education, health, politics and economy. The report says Japan has almost achieved gender equality in education and health, ranked 47th and 59th, respectively. But the nation’s overall gender equality status was lowered by a huge gender gap in the political and economic sectors, where it ranked 138th and 123rd position, respectively.

Regarding two key indicators for gender equality in politics, women accounted for only 10 percent of all Lower House members and just two of the 19 Cabinet members. The number of successful female candidates for the previous Lower House election declined by two from the previous poll even though it was the first election for the chamber following the enactment of a law urging political parties to try to achieve gender equality in their lists of candidates.

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party, the largest bloc in the Diet, offers the best chance of making strides in gender equality in politics despite its rather dismal record on that front.

This week, the party announced a “basic plan” to increase the number of women among its lawmakers. The plan calls for raising the ratio of women to all LDP Diet members to 30 percent in 10 years from the current 11 percent. The party must strike the target without fail and consider moving the target year forward.

One factor behind the lower ratio of female LDP members of the Lower House than that of the upper chamber is the principle that incumbents should be given precedence in the party’s selection of candidates for single-seat districts.

The steps for raising the number of female candidates proposed in the plan, in principle, include ensuring open recruitment of candidates for electoral districts and placing women higher in the party’s list of candidates for the proportional representation section of the Lower House election system. The LDP should make sure these goals will be attained and not end up as empty slogans.

In the WEF report, of the five indicators of gender equality in business, including a gender ratio in the overall workforce, the share of women as corporate board members and executives was especially low in Japan at 14.8 percent.

According to the Cabinet Office, women last year accounted for only 11.4 percent of the board members of Japanese companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s Prime Market, mostly leading firms, well below the figures for major Western nations, which boast figures of over 30 percent. Nearly 20 percent of Prime Market companies in Japan have no woman at all on their boards of directors.

A growing number of institutional investors, which place importance on diversity in management teams, are acting against the reappointment of the top executives of companies where no females are represented on the board. The government has called on all Prime Market companies to raise the ratio of women among the board members to 30 percent or higher by 2030.

But top executives should take the initiative in efforts to redress such gender inequality at their own companies before coming under pressure from shareholders or the government to tackle this problem. Many companies are keen to hire female lawyers and scholars from the outside. But what they need to do is train more women among their own employees to serve as senior executives.

It is crucial for Japanese society to make efforts to create a more women-friendly work environment and support their career development and that should lead to reducing the wage gap between men and women at the same time.

--The Asahi Shimbun, June 23