WUNRN
Japan - Seeing Women
as Key to the Economy, Japan's Prime Minister Names 5 Women to Cabinet
Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe of
Since taking office in December 2012, Mr. Abe has
spoken of the need to revive Japan, the world’s third-largest economy, by more
fully unleashing the potential of its huge pool of highly educated women, who
have long been relegated to relatively low-ranking positions in the work force.
He has even adopted the name “womenomics” to
describe his goal, a play on the term Abenomics, which is used for his plans to
bring Japan back from years of economic malaise. But the prime minister has
been criticized for having accomplished little of substance so far to help
women beyond raising the issue of equal opportunity in a country where
traditional gender roles remain deeply entrenched.
According to GovernanceMetrics
International, a research company based in New York that monitors corporate
behavior, women make up less than 1 percent of the board members in Japanese
corporations, ranking the country at the bottom of advanced economies. By
comparison, women make up 11.4 percent of corporate boards in the United States
and 9 percent in Germany.
It is a similar story in politics. The United
Nations says 8.1 percent of Japan’s national lawmakers are women, less than
half of the 18.3 percent in the United States.
Women have made slow progress in Japan’s work
force since the country passed its first gender equal-opportunity law in 1986,
when many women were stuck in clerical jobs as so-called blossoms of the
workplace, serving tea and greeting visitors.
While more women are now given bigger chances
early in their careers, they still report facing a host of barriers to
advancement, including the expectation by companies that career-minded
employees demonstrate loyalty by spending most of their waking hours at the
office. That often forces women to face stark choices between pursuing careers
and having children. As part of his vows to empower women, Mr. Abe has promised
to create more day care centers.
In making the new cabinet appointments,
the prime minister may have seen a political need to make a new gesture to
female voters at a time when his popularity has been sliding. Polls show that
public approval of his performance has fallen after a contentious decision to
ease constitutional restrictions on the Japanese military, though his ratings
still hover near a respectable 50 percent largely because of support for his
economic policies.
Cabinet reshuffles are common in Japan,
with prime ministers using them to hand out posts to backers as a way of
maintaining support. The new cabinet retained a conservative cast, and it
includes people loyal to his assertive agenda of making Japan a more prominent
player in regional security.
The new cabinet is the first since 2001, when
Junichiro Koizumi, Mr. Abe’s political mentor, was prime minister, to have five
of its 18 minister-level posts filled by women. Mr. Abe’s previous cabinet,
which was dissolved earlier on Wednesday, had two women.
Mr. Abe on Wednesday repeated his pledges to
increase the number of women in leadership positions, saying he wanted the
women in his new cabinet to “conjure a fresh wind of change by bringing women’s
perspectives.” The official group photograph of the new cabinet, taken at the
prime minister’s residence, showed Mr. Abe standing in the center in a black
tailcoat, surrounded by the five women in colorful dresses and kimonos.
Of the five female members, the most prominent is
Yuko Obuchi, the 40-year-old daughter of a former prime minister who has been
seen as a rising star in Japanese politics. She will become trade minister, a
powerful post. The four other women are lesser known political figures, though
one, a former journalist, Midori Matsushima, 58, was named as justice minister,
another important post.
Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, 57, and Finance
Minister Taro Aso, 73, held on to their spots. Shigeru Ishiba, 57, a popular
rival of Mr. Abe’s who had talked about distancing himself from the prime minister,
was instead enticed into joining the cabinet as the minister in charge of
reviving regional economies. He is seen by many as a possible next prime
minister.
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