The achievement of gender equality, which is ensuring that men and women enjoy the same rights, is the basis of fundamental human rights and essential to the nature of democracy. With the movement for gender equality gaining momentum around the world, the gender situation in Japan is drawing attention both domestically and internationally.

In the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2021, Japan’s overall gender gap ranking is 120th out of 156 countries. In particular, Japan is lagging behind in economic participation and opportunity for women, where it ranks 117th, and in their political empowerment, where it ranks 147th. The Japanese government attempted to implement effective gender policies for a number of years, culminating in the 2015 enactment of the Act on Promotion of Women’s Participation and Advancement in the Workplace. In 2003, the central government set the goal of increasing the percentage of women in leadership positions to 30% by 2020 (the so-called “2020-30 policy”). However, on 17 July 2020, the government announced the abandonment of this strategy. Acknowledging that it would be “impossible” to achieve their objective of 30% by the target date, government officials postponed the date of fulfilment of its objective from the original date of 2020 to “as early as possible and by 2030 (at the latest)”. This illustrates the failure of Japan’s gender-related policies, something that is also highlighted by the year-on-year decline of Japan's gender gap index rankings.

Against this background, KAS Japan will hold a series of events titled, “Women in Japan,” to explore current developments in Japan's gender environment. Although Japan faces a variety of gender-related issues, our event series will concentrate specifically on the political and economic fields, where the Japanese government has been focusing policy efforts for some time without significant success, and where Japan lags behind other countries. We will also address social issues which might be underlying contributory factors in these areas. 

In the first of our series, the “Women in Japan: Current Roles and Expectations” webinar will focus on providing an overview of the current gender environment in the three sections of politics, business, and society.