Japan, notorious for its failure to overcome wide gender disparities, seems to have finally gotten serious about utilizing the "untapped resources" of women to enhance national competitiveness and boost economic growth amid the population decline.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has revived a government target set a decade ago of raising the proportion of women in leadership positions to 30 percent by 2020. He has also called for listed companies to appoint at least one woman to their board of directors.
With around 60 percent of women leaving work after giving birth to their first child, that means 3.42 million people have removed themselves from Japan's workforce.