The past month has seen a flurry of female firsts in Japan. The Bank of Japan this week appointed the first female branch manager in its 128-year history. Japan Airlines Corp. announced its first female pilot captain. East Japan Railway now has female station masters in Tokyo for the first time. These recent developments would indicate that a wave of girl power is sweeping the country, suggests the Wall Street Journal.
But reality lags behind the headlines. The advancement and promotion of women in the world's second-largest economy is debatable, and by some measures, has worsened in recent years. In a survey that measured progress in bridging the gender gap in areas such as politics, education, economy and health, the World Economic Forum last year ranked Japan at 101 out of 134 countries. More than two-thirds of the countries covered in the report have posted gains in their scores since 2006.
Japan has slipped in the rankings every year, sliding back from its 80th spot in 2006. In listed Japanese companies, women made up just 1.2 per cent of senior executives last year. In comparison, in the U.S., women held 13.5 per cent of executive-officer positions in Fortune 500 companies in 2009, according to a survey by Catalyst Inc, a nonprofit organization that focuses on women in the workplace. Still, the latest promotions suggest the drive to better utilize the female labor force is gaining some momentum, though the pace of change remains slow. Shiseido Co., Japan's leading cosmetics company, says it aims to achieve a 30 per cent ratio of female leaders by the 2013 fiscal year, from a current ratio of 19 per cent. It is one of the few Japanese companies to have a woman on its board of directors, and has an in-house child-care facility in its offices in Tokyo. (August 4th 2010)
Source: The Wall Street Journal
