New Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba Prime Minister yesterday appointed only two women to his 20-strong Cabinet, down from five previously, in what a rights group said represented a “backslide” in Tokyo’s push for greater female representation in politics.
Ishiba, who held off a challenge from a female rival to lead Japan’s ruling party last week, picked Junko Mihara to take charge of children’s policies and Toshiko Abe to oversee education.
A quarter of the previous Cabinet of outgoing prime minister Fumio Kishida, who resigned in August partly due to a series of party scandals, were women, including the key post of foreign minister. That matched a record also reached in 2001 and 2014.
Photo: Reuters
However, that was well below female representation seen in other G7 advanced economies amid questions about a commitment by Japan’s ruling party to raise the number of its female lawmakers from about 10 percent to 30 percent over the next decade.
“Going from five women Cabinet members, which was already extremely low, to two, is a reflection of just how far Japan has to go in terms of women empowerment and equality,” said Teppei Kasai, Asia program officer at Human Rights Watch.
“In terms of the representation of women in the political arena, it’s a clear backslide,” Kasai said.
It remains to be seen how many female candidates the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) would field in a snap election due on Oct. 27.
The main opposition, Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, yesterday announced a record eight women in its 20-strong shadow Cabinet.
Despite the lack of women in Ishiba’s Cabinet, Kasai said he hoped the new prime minister would push ahead with more socially progressive policies, such as a campaign pledge to introduce a law that would allow married women to keep their maiden names.
Sanae Takaichi — who became the first woman to make the run-off in Friday’s leadership contest — is a hardline conservative who opposed changes to the surname rules and was relatively unpopular among women voters, according to polls.
Yet her achievement in nearly reaching the top in Japan’s male-dominated, traditional society should not be underestimated.
Japan ranked 118 out of 146 countries in the World Economic Forum’s 2024 gender gap report, up seven spots from the previous year, but still the lowest among G7 countries.
The contrast with its G7 peers was on show last year, when Tokyo sent a male representative to an otherwise all-female meeting on women’s empowerment in the Japanese city of Nikko.
Japan has had three women as foreign ministers, but never a female finance minister or prime minister. Tokyo elected its first female governor in 2016.
Women make up about 10 percent of lawmakers in Japan’s lower house, well below the average 30 percent across G7 economies, a 2024 report showed.
The LDP hopes to nearly triple its proportion of female lawmakers to 30 percent in the next decade through steps such as offering babysitting arrangements and a fund to support female candidates.
Asked at a press conference on Monday how the LDP planned to implement this in the upcoming election, its newly appointed election chief, Shinjiro Koizumi, said the party would “resolutely push on,” without elaborating.
The new Cabinet also shows less diversity in age. While Kishida’s Cabinet had two ministers in their 40s, Ishiba’s team is predominantly older.
The average age of Cabinet members, including Ishiba, remains at 63.5, making it one of the oldest among nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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