The election of Yuriko Koike as the first female governor of Tokyo is an encouraging sign in Japan's male-dominated society. She counters tradition in joining Yuko Tanaka, the first woman to be named president of a major Japanese university in November 2013. Despite these breakthroughs, however, women continue to be grossly underrepresented in positions of influence in Japan.
This situation is particularly apparent in higher education. Although women constitute 43 percent of all university students in Japan, females comprise only 8.7 percent of the leaders of the country's 746 universities, according to the education ministry. Those female heads were mostly found at women's colleges and vocational schools.
Things are not much better in the United States. Only 26 percent of college presidents there are women, even though more than 57 percent of students in colleges and universities are female. In fact, women have been in the majority among undergraduates since 1980. Yet female presidencies have increased by only 1 percentage point every two years. At that rate, it will take about 48 years for women to represent half of presidencies in higher education.