Every year, the World Economic Forum (WEF) publishes its report on how women fare versus men in terms of human rights and economic opportunity. The gender gap report has become a hot topic of discussion in recent years due to the country’s low ranking.
The good news is that women in Japan gained ground this year. The bad news is that they didn’t gain much – and the gains mainly fill last year’s slip. The new report paints a picture of a country failing to make any meaningful progress in women’s rights year over year.
The pluses
In last year’s WEF report, Japan fell to 125th place out of the 146 countries the WEF examined. That was a fall from 116th in 2022. This year, Japan landed back at 118th out of 146. In other words, Japan continues to bounce around the same range without making any discernable progress.
On the plus side, Japan earns continued high marks for both Educational Attainment and Health & Survival. Female literacy is 100%, maternal mortality is low, and women have access to a wide range of educational opportunities. Women also have nearly full access to paid parental leave. (Fathers, by contrast, struggle for the same right.)
Women are well-represented in educational degrees across a number of fields. The exception is Engineering, Manufacturing, and Construction, where women only occupy 14.01% of graduates. The WEF also could not gather sufficient data for a number of subjects, including STEM, Business Administration and Law, Information and Communication Technologies, and Natural Science, Math & Statistics.
Poor political representation
On the downside, women in Japan struggle in both Economic Participation & Opportunity and Political Empowerment. WEF ranked Japan 113th in politics for its extremely poor representation of women in positions of political power. Women only hold 26% of the seats in Japan’s upper House of Councillors (64) seats). They’re even less well-represented in the House of Representatives, where women hold only 46 of the 461 available seats – a mere 10%.
(As we’ve written before, this problem isn’t just a national issue. A report in 2023 found that 14% of local assemblies throughout Japan had zero women.)
Women are also missing from the country’s top-ranking office: Japan has never had a female Prime Minister.
In terms of human rights, WEF also ranked Japan as having “restricted rights” in two areas: right to divorce and reproductive autonomy. We’ve covered the issues women in Japan have with access to reproductive care – in particular, access to the morning-after pill, which is still only available via prescription.
Less economic opportunity than men
While women in Japan have access to the same educational opportunity, that doesn’t translate into economic opportunity. Japanese women face a 21% wage gap versus men in equivalent positions.
Women are also shut out of the top roles in Japanese companies. The country scored 3.96 out of 7 for women’s advancement to leadership roles. However, women only occupy 15.5% of the roles on corporate boards.
In addition, women face an imbalance at home. The WEF says that women in Japan spend 15.14% of their time doing housework—in contrast to men, who only spend 3.12%. Surveys in Japan have shown that working women continue to take care of most household chores.
It’s not just Japan
Japan’s problems echo a larger trend across its region. Eastern Asia and the Pacific ranked fourth in the WEF’s survey. The region ranks only 71.7% for Economic Participation and Opportunity and a paltry 14.5% in Political Empowerment.
The WEF report brings grim news, not just for Japan, but the entire world. According to WEF Managing Director Saadia Zahldi, progress is so slow that, at this rate, the world won’t close the gender gap for another five generations.
Zahldi called on the world’s nations “to expand and strengthen the framework conditions needed for business and civil society to work together in making gender parity an economic imperative – one that fulfills the most basic of needs and inspires the very edges of innovation.”
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Sources
【ジェンダーギャップ指数】日本、2024年は世界118位で低迷続く 政治・経済に課題. Asahi Shimbun
Global Gender Gap Report 2024. World Economic Forum
第1章 政策・方針決定過程への女性の参画. Gender Equality Bureau Cabinet Office
