While Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has vowed to empower women, the country continues to rank poorly in the number of female Diet members — placing 127th, far below China, South Korea and even North Korea, a global U.N. survey released Tuesday showed.
"It is going to require a very substantial rethinking in Japan about how we do politics and that is really the challenge of the prime minister," said Anders Johnsson, the Secretary-General of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, a global organization of national parliaments.
IPU and U.N. Women jointly launched the Women in Politics Map 2014 based on data up to Jan. 1, 2014. Compiled annually, the map tracks women's political progress and last year reported that Japan ranked slightly higher at No. 122.