Japan

Japan: 30% Of Top Executives To Be Women By 2030

APR 28 2023·Updated MAY 8 2023

Story

Image credit: Getty Images [via The Guardian]

The Facts

On Thursday, Japanese PM Fumio Kishida announced plans to increase the number of top female executives in the country’s major companies to at least 30% by the end of the decade.
guardian
At a meeting on gender equality held this week, Kishida said, “We seek to have the ratio of women among executives at 30% or more by 2030 in companies that are listed on the Tokyo stock exchange’s prime market.”
Firstpost
The announcement comes as Japan is set to host the G7 leaders’ summit in Hiroshima next month. The country ranks 116 out of 146 in the 2022 World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap report — the lowest among the G7 nations.
Firstpost
Among all the G7 nations, Japan also has the widest gender pay gap, with women earning around 25% as much as men for full-time work, according to a report by the Statistics Bureau of Japan published earlier this month.
BNN
According to a cabinet office survey, women represented only 11.4% of top executives in major companies on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 2022.
South China Morning Post
The country, which unveiled the same goal in 2003 to be achieved by 2020, lags behind other countries regarding corporate gender equality. Women in the US reportedly hold 40% of managerial roles, compared to more than 30% in the UK and France.
Kyodo News+

Sources Split

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RIGHT

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The Spin

Left narrative

As the vast majority of Japanese citizens now recognize that women face institutionalized discrimination, both the public and private sectors must realize the importance of including women in the upper echelons of society. Japan is still tied to its traditional views of gender roles, so if it wants to tap into the potential political and economic benefits of inclusion, it must train its corporate and government entities to accept that equality is the route to success.

Dw.Com

Right narrative

Despite the claims made in unserious, non-peer-reviewed studies, gender diversity on corporate boards has virtually no positive impact on company success, nor does it have a negative effect. Forcing women into executive positions to fill a quota will not lead to any significant change. This trend has proven true in both the corporate world and other sectors, where women, like men, are hired for their experiences and accomplishments rather than their gender.

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