Resona Holdings Inc. aims to help narrow the country's gender gap by adding female managers and appointing a woman as an executive for the first time.
The lender plans to increase the portion of female managers to 30 percent from the current 4 percent by 2020, and select a woman as an operating officer in the "near future," Chairman Eiji Hosoya, 66, said in an interview in Tokyo. "Companies that don't give women leading roles will be left behind."
Japan trails China, the U.S. and 95 other countries in gender equality, according to the World Economic Forum. More needs to be done to encourage Japanese women to stay in the workforce after having children, said Naoko Nemoto, a managing director at Standard & Poor's.