Japanese Women in the Workplace: Moving Forward

January 13, 2014, EU-Japan Centre.

By Ben Bloch

November 11, 2025

This month, Prime Minister Shinzō Abe added five women to his cabinet. This is the second time in Japan’s history that there have been five female ministers at once, the other time being in 2001 under reformist Prime Minister Junichirō Koizumi. Abe hopes that this addition will reinforce his credibility in terms of promoting women in the workplace, and will attract the women’s vote for the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in the 2015 nationwide elections.

Abe has generally been seen as a progressive in Japan’s political sphere, and is the first Japanese Prime Minister since 2007 to remain in office for more than a year. Much of Abe’s success has been due to “Abenomics,” a three-pronged economic program aimed to increase Japan’s GDP. However, Abenomics also involves social factors, such as the promotion of women to leadership positions, both in the public and private sectors.

The five women named as ministers are historically conservative politicians who, on certain issues, may be even more conservative than Abe. Only Yūko Obuchi, the youngest of the appointees at age 40, is considered a moderate. Obuchi has exhibited certain left-wing policies, such as publicly supporting the right of married women to use their maiden names rather than take their husband’s family name, as is traditionally more common in Japan.

These promotions reflect Japan’s move towards women in the workplace. In 2013, the employment rate of Japanese women ages 15-64 was a record high of 63%. However, the trend of Japanese women to quit working after childbirth has remained, with only about 40% of working women continuing after the birth of their first child. Furthermore, the majority of working women have only temporary or part-time positions. Only further complicating the issue of women in the workplace is the problem of Japan’s declining birth rate; many politicians feel that women are sacrificing children by choosing to further their careers, and so encourage women to stay at home and take care of their children.

Abe has openly stated his approval of women taking jobs, and has made a goal of his cabinet to further equalize the gender ratio in the workplace. The ultimate goal is to increase the ratio of women to men in leadership positions to 3:7 by 2020.