A trailblazing woman who dedicated her career to advancing the status of Japanese women in society and known as the “mother of the equal opportunity law” has died.

The Japan Committee for UNICEF announced the passing of its chair, Ryoko Akamatsu, on Feb. 7. She was 94.

As the head of women’s bureau at the labor ministry, Akamatsu was instrumental in passing the Equal Employment Opportunity Law, which was enacted in 1985 and took effect in 1986.

“The way women work is completely different without this law,” Akamatsu said. “There are thousands of laws in the world, but I think this law drastically changed the course of Japanese history.”

WARNING THE BUSINESS WORLD

Akamatsu was born in Osaka in 1929. She studied law at the University of Tokyo and joined the labor ministry.

There, she held key senior positions, as well as in the Cabinet Office, working hard to pass the monumental law that prohibits companies from treating men and women differently in hiring, promotion and in other areas.

Prior to the gender equality law, it was common for women to be turned away at the door for employment or forced to resign upon marriage or childbirth.

A law ensuring equality in employment was needed for Japan to ratify the United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

Akamatsu went around warning the business world opposed to such a law that if Japan failed to ratify the treaty, its position as a developed country would suffer.

The law was passed after a compromise to limit prohibiting discrimination in hiring and promotion to a duty of effort without penalty.

Some women’s groups criticized the law, but it was later revised and strengthened.

Akamatsu also served as ambassador to Uruguay and as a member of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women.

In 1993, she was appointed education minister.

In 2008, Akamatsu became the first woman to chair the Japan Committee for UNICEF.

HELPING WOMEN IN POLITICS

Even as she reached her 70s, her passion for gender equality remained undiminished.

In 1999, she founded Win Win, an organization that provides financial support to women who wish to enter politics.

Focusing on a system introduced in countries around the world that allocates a certain percentage of candidates and other positions to women, she also formed the association to promote a quota system in Japan, often called Q-no-kai, in 2012.

She worked to pass the election gender parity law, which requires political parties to have the same number of male and female candidates whenever possible. It was enacted in 2018.

On the day the election gender parity law passed, the women of the Q-no-kai gathered at the Diet building in Tokyo and held a single carnation in their hands.

It was a gesture to express their gratitude to Akamatsu, who by then had become the “mother of two equal opportunity laws.”

“It is not enough that we have created the equal opportunity laws,” Akamatsu said in an interview with The Asahi Shimbun in December 2023.

“There are still many things that remain to be done,” she added. “Unless we change the mindset that men should work and women should stay home and cook, society as a whole will not move forward.”

‘NO ONE ELSE LIKE HER’

Friends and supporters grieved the loss of such a major figure for women’s equality.

“We lost a wonderful person,” said Keiko Higuchi, a critic three years younger than Akamatsu. “I am in a state of shock.”

Higuchi first met Akamatsu at a women’s issue study group she attended when she was 30.

At their first meeting, she told Akamatsu gender equality should be guaranteed not only in the workplace, but also at home and in child-rearing, and Akamatsu listened with interest.

The law passed and society slowly began to change.

Still, there were times when the two would wipe away tears and say indignantly, “The patriarchal system is still there in the midst of the modern high-rise buildings,” Higuchi recalled.

They often dined out together.

At their last meeting, they promised that they would meet up again in February or March, Higuchi said.

“Akamatsu told me that there was a ‘long line’ of women who spoke up and that a framework for gender equality had been established because of them,” Higuchi said. “I am thankful for Akamatsu that I, too, was able to stand in the line.”

Yoko Hayashi, a lawyer who chaired the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, remembers that Akamatsu “used her knowledge and experience as a bureaucrat to engage in (nongovernmental organization) activities and ran with the women in the field.

“She was never arrogant, and her humorous personality attracted many women to her activities,” she added. “There is no one else like her.”

Masaharu Nakagawa, a Lower House member of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan who chairs a bipartisan caucus of Diet members to enact the gender parity law, said the persistent efforts from Akamatsu, who was in her late 80s at the time, to reach out to Diet members left a lasting impression on him.

“She was a woman of conviction,” he said.

(This article was written by Sawa Okabayashi, Natsuki Edogawa and Kei Kobayashi.)