It’s been a dismal decade for gender equality in Japan.
To say that former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s womenomics strategy has underdelivered would be an understatement. Far from becoming “a Japan in which women can shine,” women are still hugely underrepresented in leadership roles, with the promise to fill 30 percent of leadership positions in society by 2020 now downgraded to a non-binding, distant goal for 2030.
And the gender gap is widening: This year saw Japan slide 11 places to 121st out of 153 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2020. (Japan ranked 80th place in 2006.)