Despite its catchy name and its importance to Japan's economy, womenomics — a policy to empower women that has been advocated by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — has not necessarily experienced a straight line of progress.
According to a recent report by Kathy Matsui of Goldman Sachs (who originally came up with the policy concept), although Japan has achieved several important improvements including its relatively high rate of female labor participation (71 percent), several chronic issues hamper the overall success of the policy. A dearth of female leaders and limited childcare capacity are two examples of such issues. In addition, the society's continuing aging and the concurrent shrinking of the workforce population will have serious impacts on the economy over time; this makes the womenomics agenda very time-sensitive, Matsui says.
The bad news for Japan is that it now faces another workforce-related nightmare: the cybersecurity talent gap. To be fair, this is not a unique problem for Japan. The global cybersecurity industry has been struggling to keep up with fast-growing workforce demand, and those struggles are likely to continue. According to (ISC)²'s 2018 study, about 2.93 million cybersecurity-related positions are vacant around the globe, and more than 70 percent (2.14 million) of those unfilled jobs belong to the Asia-Pacific region.