Women accounted for a record 33.2 percent of all council members at government ministries and agencies, Mizuho Fukushima, the state minister in charge of gender equality, said Friday.
Compiled at the end of September, the figure, which represents a 0.8 point increase from the year before, indicates the government will almost certainly attain its goal of raising the number to 33.3 percent by the end of fiscal 2010, Fukushima said.
Besides gender equality, she is state minister in charge of consumer affairs, food safety and birthrate decline.
The government has also set a goal of raising the ratio of women council members to more than 40 percent by 2020.
Of the 1,809 members on Japan's 110 councils, women totaled 600, Fukushima said.
The largest percentage, 42.1 percent, were on councils in the Foreign Ministry.