Draft legislation prepared by the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe requires large companies as well as the national and local governments to set and publicly disclose targets for promoting women in their organizations beginning in fiscal 2016.

The move follows a goal Abe set in his economic growth strategy of raising the ratio of women in leading positions in society to 30 percent by 2020.

Members of the business community are said to have resisted setting a uniform target for boosting the ratio of women in management on the grounds that their ability to do so would differ between individual companies and sectors.